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THE UNIVERSITY 
OF ILLINOIS — 
LIBRARY _ 


S55 P1\9ae 
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Return this book on or before the 
Latest Date stamped below. 


University of Illinois Library 


Mey a4 1964 ‘TT oO 4 
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JAN 25 1305 


MAY 03 1989 


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THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY 
EDITED BY J. E. SPINGARN 








THE FAILURE 


[Un Uomo Finito] 


By 
GIOVANNI PAPINI 


Author of ‘‘ Life of Christ’”’ 


Authorized translation by 


VIRGINIA POPE 





New York 
Harcourt, Brace and Company 





COPYRIGHT, 1924, By 
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC, 


PRINTED IN THE U.S. A. BY 
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY 
RAHWAY, N. J 


| CFS PI9S 


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See age anaes 
: « PRS 





im Ou. Ep 
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L. Tu non se’? morta, ma se’ ismarrita 
Anima nostra, che si ti lamenti. | 

> DANTE. 
_— 
(O soul of mine so piteously lamenting, 
. Q) Thou art not dead but only stunned awhile.) 
Vm, 

“— 


Coa 





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MoT UAE Sy 
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Contents 


Andante 


PAGE 
Meeormarmotoerab i.) wethaaal! tng does ada 3 
SEE EEOORS. hep gS aye a a 9 
3. A Million Books ; : , merry ter Abr res tad f° 
4. From Everything to Nothing . sk! Eke oe cee ae 19 
5, The Triumphal Arch GD hts cooing alae wee | ee 
6. Poverty ; ‘ ; ; : ° . ‘ ‘ ht] 
7, My Tuscany : ‘ : . : ° . . y DBR" § 
cA ppassionato 
OG OS) RS a ean ark Santas ae ree Se 
9, Others . : ; ; ; 7 4 a he : : 62 
10 -Het) +. : , : ‘ ‘ ' : ; ; ane 
11. I Discover Unity t : : : . . , ie | 
12. I Am the World. : : é ‘ ‘ og uae 
13. Nothing Is True... Tout est permis! . Pe 
14, Fever Heat . ; : ; : Sl daw duet “te A tet 3 
T empestoso 
15. I Make a Speech at Night ide tey eo 5. | ne eo 
16. Palazzo Davanzati . ; : ‘ : , Lee Le 
Wen 01.1, no... °<. ‘ : : : ; : ‘ ys 
18. Flight from Reality . . : ; : : y , ule 
19. My Dead Brothers. ; ‘ ‘ ‘ : : WR he 
20. Small Remainders. i : ‘ ; i wal utes 


21. And Not a Word of Love? .. 4 ‘ . : #130 
Vv 


vi 


CONTENTS 


Solenne 


wa 


23. 
rh a 
vo 
26. 
otis 
28, 


My Mission 

Perfect ‘ 
A Man of Genius . 
Dies Ire 


Action . 
Toward a New World 


The Approach to Divinity hd 


Lentissimo 


ae 5 
JU, 
Oils 
32. 
ce 
ats 
Juve 
36. 
mie 
38, 
39. 
40. 
41. 
Ve 
43, 


I Come Down from the Mountains . 
I Have Only Myself to Blame . 
Days of Shame . 
What Do You Want of Me? 
Glory : 
And Supposing . . 
Am I a Fool? 
. And an Ignoramus 
I Do Not Know Men. 
Inspiration 
My Debts 
The Clown . 
Certainty 
Let Misfortune Corie! : 
The Disintegration of the Baty, : 


Allegretto 


44, 
45. 
46. 
$7. 
48. 
$9. 
50. 


Death . : ; ‘ 
But for That vine Bennet 

. The Return to Earth 
Who Am I]? 
My Style . : 4 
Neither Down Nor Out : : : 
To the New Generation 


PAGE 
163 


174 
180 
185 
196 
204 
209 


223 
227 
232 
235 
237 
241 
245 
249 
253 
258 
261 
266 
271 
276 
279 


287 
290 
298 
307 
313 
S17 
321 


eAndante 


“All his life he lived alone and wild.” 
ARIOSTO, 


"y 


. 


a Pay miteey 


er 
i 


1 of y . am aye 


Pane | 





Chapter 1: A Torn Photograph 


I was never a child; I never had a childhood. | 

I cannot count among my memories warm, golden 
days of childish intoxication, long joyous hours of in- 
nocence, or the thrill of discovering the universe anew 
each day. I learned of such things later on in life 
from books. Now I guess at their presence in the 
children I see. I was more than twenty when I first 
experienced something similar in myself, in chance 
moments of abandonment, when I was at peace with 
the world. Childhood is love; childhood is gaiety; 
childhood knows no cares. But I always remember 
myself, in the years that have gone by, as lonely, 
sad, and thoughtful. 

Ever since I was a little boy I have felt tremen- [ 
dously alone—and “peculiar.” | 

I don’t know why. 

It may have been because my family was poor or / 
because I was not born the way other children are 
born; I cannot tell. I remember only that when I 
was Six or seven years old a young aunt of mine 
called me vecchio—“old man,” and the nickname was 
.adopted by all my family. Most of the time I wore 
a long, frowning face. I talked very little, even with 
other children; compliments bored me; _ baby-talk 

3 


4 THE FAILURE 


angered me. Instead of the noisy play of the com- 
panions of my boyhood I preferred the solitude 
of the most secluded corners of our dark, cramped, 
poverty-stricken home. I was, in short, what ladies 
in hats and fur coats call a “bashful” or a “stubborn” 
child; and what our women with bare heads and 
shawls, with more directness, call a rospo—a “toad.” 

They were right. 

I must have been, and I was, utterly unattractive 
to everybody. I remember, too, that I was well aware 
of the antipathy I aroused. It made me more “bash- 
ful,” more “stubborn,” more of a “toad” than ever. 
I did not care to join in the games played by other 
boys, but preferred to stand apart, watching them 
with jealous eyes, judging them, hating them. It 
wasn’t envy I felt at such times: it was contempt; 
it was scorn. My warfare with men had begun even 
then and even there.. I avoided people, and they 
neglected me. I did not love them, and they hated 
ES At play in the parks some of the boys would 
\ 


Vw ee 


pt A oe 0 


chase me; others would laugh at me and call me 
names. At school they pulled my curls or told the 
‘teachers tales about me. Even on my grandfather’s 
farm in the country peasant brats threw stones at me 
without provocation, as if they felt instinctively that 
I belonged to some other breed. My relations, when 
they visited us, never called me to them, never petted 
me, except when the merest sense of decency seemed 
to demand it. I sensed the insincerity of such caresses 
and hid myself away in silence; when I was forced 


> 


A TORN PHOTOGRAPH 5 


to answer their questions I was rude, discourteous, 
and impudent. 

One memory is engraved on my heart more deeply 
than any other: chill, damp, Sunday evenings of No- 
vember or December spent at my grandfather’s; a 
steaming bowl of punch in the middle of the table; 
a great bronze oil lamp hanging from the rafters; 
roasted chestnuts in a deep bowl passing from hand 
to hand; and all around the board the flushed faces 
of our numerous family—aunts, uncles, cousins, in 
greater numbers than I could count. 

The patriarch, white and keen of wit, would sit by 


the fireside laughing and drinking. Under a light 


covering of ash the embers would crackle; the glasses 
would clink as they hit the plates; my aunts, bigoted, 
small-minded creatures, oozing with the scandal and 
the gossip of the week, would raise their voices in 
hideous chatter, as their offspring scrambled about 
the floor piercing the blue clouds of paternal smoke 
with shrieks and laughter. The noise of this stupid, 
miserly party made my soul and my head ache. I 
felt a stranger in that gathering—worlds apart from 
all of them. As soon as I could, unnoticed, I would 
slip out of the room, and feeling my way along a 
damp wall, come to the long dark passage leading to 
the outer entrance. My poor, lonely, little heart 
would beat as if I were about to commit a crime. 
A glass door opened from the passageway upon a 
small uncovered court. Pushing it gently ajar, lI 
would stand listening to the rain as it dripped from 


6 THE FAILURE 


the roof upon the pavement or into the puddles under 
the eaves—a tired, listless, reluctant drip falling with- 
out enthusiasm, without decision, with that steady 
lifelessness, with that stupid galling obstinacy, of 
things that never end. I would listen to it there in 
the dark, the cool air fanning my face, my eyelids 
wet with raindrops; and if some capricious flurry 
splashed my cheek I was as happy as if it had come 
to purify me, to invite me out with it into the clean 
distances—far from houses, far from Sunday evening 
family parties. But soon a voice would call me back 
to light, to misery, to a chorus of reproaches: “‘Where 
did that boy get his manners?” 

f Yes, it is true, I never was a child. I was an “old 
'man,” “a toad,” thoughtful and sullen. 

Even from those early days the best of my life 
was within me. Cut off from joy and affection I with- 
drew into my inner self as a wild animal into its den, 
hiding myself away, stretching my cramped limbs, 
gaping with a bloodthirsty hunger which I satisfied 
with raw and eager dreams, in a lonely introspection 
into my empty soul, a fierce contemplation of the 
world as I saw it through that empty soul. Such was 
my only refuge, such my only joy. No one “liked” 
me. Hatred imprisoned me in solitude. Solitude 
made me sadder and more unlikeable; unhappiness 
stupefied my heart but stimulated my mind. I was 
“peculiar”—I was “different.” My “difference” sepa- 
rated me from those nearest me, and with the widen- 
ing breach my “peculiarity” increased. At the very 


A TORN PHOTOGRAPH 5 


outset of life I began to taste, if not to understand, 
the sweetness, which only grown men for the most 
part feel, of that infinite and indefinable melancholy 
which spurns tears and groans and consolations, and 
which, content wtih its very lack of purpose, feeds 
on itself, little by little forming the habit of a selfish, 
secluded, wholly inward life, learning not to depend 
on others, separating itself forever from its fellow- 
men. 

No, I have never known what it was to be young, 
nor can I recall having been a child. I was shy and 
pensive always, retiring and silent always, without a 
_ smile, without a single outburst of spontaneous joy. 

I recognize myself in the pale and bewildered crea- 
ture my first picture shows. 

The photograph is small, dirty, faded, and torn 
through the middle just under the heart; the edges of 
the pasteboard mounting around it are black, like 
bands of mourning. The washed-out face of a dreamy 
_ child is turned toward the left—because in that direc- 
tion, as you feel, there happens to be no one whose 
gaze he must endure. The eyes are sad and a little 
sunken (perhaps the photograph was not a good 
one! ); the mouth is firmly closed, its lips pressed one 
upon the other as if to hide the teeth. One feature 
of beauty only: long soft curls that lie in a tangled 
mass on a Sailor collar. 

My mother says I was seven when this photograph 
was taken. Perhaps I was. I have no other proof 
of my childhood. But could you call this the picture 


PTR eee OEE, 


a 


8 THE FAILURE 


of a child—the weazened, bleached, misshapen ghost, 
that does not look at me, that refuses to look at any- 
body? 

It is not hard to see that these eyes were never in- 
tended to reflect the blue of the skies—they are gray 
and cloudy, by nature. These cheeks that are white 
and pale—they will always be white and pale. No 
blush will ever come to them (except from fatigue or 
from shame). And these lips, so tightly, so wilfully, 
closed were never made to be parted in a smile, nor 
were they made for speech, for prayer, for shouts of 
glee. They are the lips of a man who will suffer pain, 
but never betray it with a cry. They are lips that 
will be kissed too late in life. 

In this bit of faded photograph I find the dead soul 
of those early days of mine; the sickly face of a 
“toad,” the frown of a “sullen,” a “stubborn” child, 
the self-possessed dejection of an “old man.” I feel 
a grip at my heart as I think of all those dreary days, 
of all those endless years, of that fettered, imprisoned 
life, of that purposeless useless anguish, of that in- 
satiable homesick longing for other skies and other 
comrades. 

No, no, this is not the picture of a child. I must 
insist again: I never had a childhood. 


Chapter 2: A Hundred Books 


A MaD craving for knowledge rescued me from my 
solitude. Ever since I solved the mysteries of my 
speller, line by line, letter by letter—fat, squatty let- 
ters, lower-case, but in broad-faced type; impeccably 
moral illustrations in wood-cut; and winter evenings 
(how cold they were, how far away they seem!) as 
I sat under the big lamp, the lamp shade painted with 
blue flowers and yellow, beside my mother, still young, 
alone there save for me, her black hair shining in the 
lamp-light as she bent over her sewing—I have had 
no greater pleasure, no surer solace, than reading. My 
clearest and most cherished recollections of those 
years are not of my first blue velvet sailor cap; nor 
of oranges sucked dry at the edge of a stagnant 
garden pool; nor of stately tin war-horses vainly 
prancing on their strips of wood; nor yet of a first 
mysterious tingling felt in the presence of a little girl, 
panting, her lips half-opened, after a run at my side. 
Instead, I recall, with a still childish longing, my first 
or second reader, a poor, humble, wretchedly stupid 
book bound in light yellow pasteboard—on the cover 
a model boy, plump and pious, kneeling beside a nar- 
row iron bed, and apparently saying the rhymed 
prayer I could spell out below. And my homesick 
yearning is even greater when I remember a kind of 
9 


10 THE FAILURE 


“Arabian Nights” of nature, a monstrous tome in a 
frayed green binding, its vast pages crumpled and 
rusty with dampness, many of them torn half in two 
or soiled with thumb marks and ink spots, which I 
always opened with the certainty of finding a marvel 
that was ever new though I had seen it many times 
before. There gigantic devil-fish with great, round, 
cruel eyes rose from the Pacific Ocean to catch big 
sailing vessels in their embrace; a tall youth knelt 
(his hat on, however) on the top of a mountain, cast- 
ing a colossal shadow out against a murky German 
sky; between the steep towering cliffs of a Spanish 
mountain gorge rode a diminutive knight, his armor 
barely gilded with a ray of light from the sky so far 
above—frightened, he seemed, by the silence of that 
awful abyss; a sleepy Chinese god—with nothing on 
but a piece of cloth hanging from his waist, a hammer 
in one hand and a chisel in the other—was putting 
the finishing touches on the World, chipping off the 
points of stiff, brittle stalagmites that rose in a jum- 
bled forest from the earth about him; on the edge of 
a promontory, facing a white, stormy Polar Sea, stood 
a daring explorer, buried in his furs, unfurling a black 
wind-tattered flag to Arctic gales. Turning a red- 
dened page or two, I would come upon fantastic 
Skeletons of prehistoric monsters; dumb faces of 
Polynesian savages; coral islands floating like skiffs on 
a tropical sea; terrifying comets hurtling with long 
yellow tails across limitless ink-black skies that shrank 
in horror before them. 


A HUNDRED BOOKS II 


Among the first books to fall into my hands was a | 
badly dilapidated copy of the memoirs of Garibaldi. 


_ I read and reread it, not understanding, yet instinc- 


tively stirred by all that smell of powder, all that flash- 
ing of sabers, all that spectacle of red-shirted outlaws 
riding to victory. I had not a trace of definite infor- 
mation in my head. I did not know what Italy was | 
nor what a war was; but I had to give vent to my | 
excitement somehow, so I made a sketch of the Gen- 
eral’s bearded face on the fly-leaf of the book; and | 
that seemed to make him something alive and close 
to me. 

One of the supreme moments of my life was when 
my father gave me full privileges over the family 
library, which was a round wicker basket—containing 
a hundred books or more—forgotten in a small store- 
room in our rear attic, high up under the gables and 
overlooking the roofs of the houses around. ‘That 
room became the veritable Alhambra of my dreams. 
All sorts of odds and ends had accumulated there— 
fire-wood, cast-off rags, mouse-traps, bird cages, a Na- 
tional Guard musket and a red, moth-eaten Garibaldi 
shirt (on it a medal of the ’60 campaign). 

Every day, the instant I was free, I locked myself 
up in that room, and, one by one, handling them with 
awe and almost fearful circumspection, drew the dis- 
carded books from their hiding place, poor dilapidated 
things, their covers gone, their backs broken, Volume 
IIl’s without Volume I’s, pages missing, or torn or 
crumpled, spotted with fly-specks or pigeon dung— 


eed 


12 THE FAILURE 


but so rich and glorious in surprises, wonders, and 
promises for me. I read here and there; I deciphered; 
I did not always understand; if I grew tired, I would 
begin afresh, so impatient was the ecstasy I felt at 
these my first approaches to the worlds of poetry, ad- 
venture, or history, which a word, a phrase, a picture, 
would evoke for a fleeting instant before my eyes. 
I did not stop at reading: I dreamed; I meditated; 
I reconstructed; struggling to divine the meaning of 
it all. Those books were sacred things in my eyes. 
I believed every word they said. I was unable to dis- 
tinguish between history and legend, between fact and 
fancy; printed letters stood for infallible truth to me. 
My reality was not the life I knew at home, in 
school, on the streets, but the world of those books, 
) where I felt myself most alive. On scorching after- 
‘noons in summer I was with Garibaldi galloping across 
_ the pampas of Uruguay with herds of cattle, bullets 
_ | Showering around him, his cape blowing in the wind; 
Leon rainy mornings I spent with Count Alfieri cours- 
ing behind spans of horses and miles of verses along 
all the post-roads of Europe; my nights were nights 
of patriotic hatreds or of oratorical frenzies of glory, 
passed in company with the illustrious men whose ac- 
quaintance I made in Plutarch’s ‘“Lives,”’—dozens of 
tiny volumes, I remember, bound in blue paper and 
printed in very small type. 
Moreover, those books gave me my first impulse to 
think. Down toward the bottom of that marvelous 
basket I found five or six large green volumes (a col- 


A HUNDRED BOOKS 13 


lection of aphorisms of Voltaire compiled by some 
infidel) in which God and Theology were overthrown 
and the Bible and the priests of the Church held up 
to ridicule. Among the many other things in that first 
hundred books was a copy also of Carducci’s “Hymn 
to Satan”; and from the day I found that poem I 
have always felt a greater love for the Rebellious 
Angel under the earth than for the majestic Old Fogey 
who dwelt in the heavens. Later on I came to realize 
how crude and unsound all that anti-religious apolo-. 
getic was; but to it I owe the fact, be it good or bad, | 
that I am a man for whom God has never existed. | 
Born of a father who was an atheist, baptized without 
his knowledge by my mother, brought up in ignorance } 
of church and catechism, I have never had a so-called ( 
“crisis of the soul,” a “night of Jouffroy,” a “discovery . 
of the death of God.” For me God never died be- 
cause He never lived in my heart. 

There was another book which had a great influence 
on my mind at that time and consequently during later 
years: “The Praise of Folly,” by Erasmus of Rotter- 
dam. We had an Italian translation of that book in 
the house, illustrated with the sharp and spirited wood- 
cuts of Holbein. I read and reread it several times 
with indescribable delight. Perhaps to Erasmus I 
owe my passion for unusual thoughts and my pro- 
found conviction that when men are not fools they 
are scoundrels. 


Chapter 3: A Million Books 


AFTER a few years of voracious and disordered read- 
ing I found that the limited number of books we had 
at home (plus those I borrowed from the scant collec- 
tions of friends and relatives, plus second-hand vol- 
umes which I bought with the few pennies I would 
steal from my mother or save from my allowances 
for recess) were hopelessly insufficient. An older boy 
told me of rich and magnificent libraries in town which 
were open to everybody and where any book could be 
had for the asking—best of all, without spending a 
cent. 

I decided to go there at once. 

There was however one difficulty: to gain admission 
to those paradises you had to be at least sixteen years 
old. I was twelve or thirteen, but even too tall for 
my age. One July morning I made the experiment. 
Trembling, fearful, my heart beating violently, I came 
to a long stone stairway—how broad, how immense, 
how imposing it seemed! At the top I hesitated for 
two or three minutes, but finally mustered my courage 
and entered the application room. I filled out a slip 
the way I thought it ought to be, and handed it in, 
with the self-conscious and guilty air of a person who 
knows he is doing wrong. The clerk—I can see him 
still, curses on him!—was a little man with a big belly, 

14 


A MILLION BOOKS 15 


a pair of squinting watery blue eyes (like the eyes of 
a dead fish), and deep shrewd wrinkles on either side 
of his mouth. He looked me over with an air of com- 
passion and, in an irritating drawling voice, inquired: 

“Just a moment—how old are you?” 

My face flushed with rage rather than with shame, 
and I answered, adding three extra years to my twelve: 

“Fifteen.” 

“Not old enough. Sorry! Read the rules! Come 
back in a year.” 

I went out angry, humiliated, crushed, aflame with 
a child’s hatred of that detestable man who was bar- 
ring me, a poor boy starving for knowledge, from the 
use of—-a million books, and who, taking cowardly 
advantage of a mere number printed on a piece of 
paper, was basely robbing me of a year of light and 
joy. On entering I had caught a glimpse of a vast 
hall with lines of venerable, high-backed chairs cov- 
ered with green cloth, and all around the walls, books, 
books, books, old books, massive, heavy, bound in 
leather and parchment, lettered and ironed in gold— 
a dream! Locked in every one of those books was 
the thing I wanted, the food for which I was starving: 
tales of emperors, poems of battles, lives of men who 
were more like gods, the sacred books of dead peoples, 
the sciences of all things, the verses of all poets, the 
systems of all philosophers. The thousand promises 
contained in those golden letters were for me! At 
my command those dust-covered volumes waiting there 
on their shelves behind the closely woven wire of the 


16 THE FAILURE 


screening would have come down to me and [I could 
have read them, studied them, devoured them, chapter 
by chapter, page by page, at my leisure! 

I did not wait for another year to pass before trying 
a second time. Again I failed. Nor was I successful 
until the next summer. I was then just past thirteen— 
perhaps thirteen and a half. 

With the assistance of an older boy, who for some 
time had had free access to the library, I was at last 
able to get in. Fearing that I might attract attention 
or be taken for a child trying to fritter an idle hour 
away, I asked for a very serious book—a scientific 
book—Canestrini on Darwin. 

This time another clerk was sitting behind the wood 
and glass partition—a tall, thin, ungainly fellow, 
looking more like a plucked chicken than like a man, 
and so nervous that he could neither stand still nor 
sit still. Without looking at me he took my slip, 
marked it with a blue pencil and handed it silently to 
a fattish sort of boy standing at his side. 

I waited for half an hour, holding my breath for 
fear the book might not be in the library or that they 
might decide not to bring it to me. When at last it 
came I clutched it under my arm, and stole bashfully, 
on tip-toe, into the great reading-room. Never had I 
been filled with such awe, not even as a child in church. 
As though appalled at my own daring and frightened 
at finding myself, after so much plotting, in that im- 
mense reliquary of the wisdom of the ages, I sat down 


A MILLION BOOKS 17 


in the first unoccupied chair I came to. Confusion, 
pleasure, stupor, the feeling that all of a sudden I was 
somehow older and more of a man, filled me with such 
bewilderment that for almost an hour I could not un- 
derstand a word of the book that lay in front of me. 

An atmosphere of majesty and holiness pervaded 
the great hall—like the sanctuary of a nation it seemed 
to me. Those chairs, with their dirty, greasy, faded 
upholstery—the green ending in yellow in some places 
or disappearing under black spots and stains in others 
—became in my eyes so many majestic thrones. The 
silence weighed on my soul more solemnly and im- 
pressively than the deep peace of a cathedral. 

From then on I went back every day, snatching 
every hour my tedious school work left free to me. 
Little by little I became accustomed to that silence, to 
that great room which soared above my shock of 
tangled uncombed hair, to that boundless wealth of 
volumes, old and new, of newspapers, reviews, pam- 
phlets, atlases, manuscripts. Soon I felt quite at home. 
I came to distinguish between the different employees, 
to know the meanings of the mysterious numbers on 
the books and in the catalogues, to recognize the faces 
of various faithful and devoted bookworms who came 
there to read, as I did, every day—punctual and im- 
patient as to a rendezvous with a beautiful girl. 

I threw myself into all the readings suggested to me 
whether by my bubbling curiosity or by the titles of 
books which I found in other books seen in shop 


18 THE FAILURE 


windows or,on the push-carts of street venders. And 
so, without experience, without plan, guidance, or direc- 
tion, but with all the ardor and fury of passion, I began 
the hard, the glorious life of one who would know 


everything. 


’ Chapter 4: From Everything to Nothing _ 


Wuat did I want to learn? What did I want to do? 
I did not know. I had no programs, no advisers, not 
‘even a definite purpose. What matter whether I 
started here or there, turned East or West, went toward 
the depths or toward the heights? All I wanted was 
to know, know, know—know everything. (Every- 
thing! the watchword of my perpetual undoing!) Even 
at that age, I was one of those men who have no use 
for a little or for a half. Everything or nothing! And 
I have always wanted everything—an everything which 
neglects and excludes nothing. Completeness and 
totality, leaving nothing to be desired thereafter! 
Finis; in other words, immutability, death! 

Eager to know everything and not knowing where 
to begin, I flew from subject to subject with the aid 
of manuals, text-books, dictionaries, encyclopedias. 

The encyclopedia was the height of my ambitions 
and dreams; I thought it the greatest of all books; for, 
taking appearances and claims at their face value, it 
contained—yes, just so!—everything: the names of all 
men, all cities, all animals, all plants, all rivers, all 
mountains, each in its proper place, explained and 
illustrated. The encyclopedia answered every question 
offhand, without putting you to any trouble of re- 
search. My lively imagination pictured all other books 

I9 , 


20 THE FAILURE 


as rivers pouring their contents into that boundless 
ocean of knowledge; as bunches of grapes destined to 
fill that great vat of wine with their blood-red juice; 
as uncountable grains of wheat, which, ground and 
kneaded, became bread to fill all hungry mouths and 
satisfy all appetites. 

As the mystic loses himself in the thought of the 
one universal God and seeks to forget all particulars 
of sense, so I plunged headlong into that sea of knowl- 
edge which no sooner flooded my soul than it sent a 
new desire, a new thirst, upon me. 

Through the continued use and handling of encyclo- 
pedias I was finally possessed with the idea of com- 
piling one myself. At fifteen, with a mind lusting in- 
continently for knowledge, the undertaking seemed an 
easy one. However, my encyclopedia was not to be 
like others. After a considerable amount of study 1 
came to the conclusion that no complete and perfect 
encyclopedia was as yet in existence. Some, I found, 
contained things which others lacked: in spots they said 
very little, in others much more; and to my eventual 
astonishment and great chagrin I discovered that in 
many cases—cases of rare names and information of 
detail—they were silent, not to say ignorant, entirely. 

So I proposed to compile an encyclopedia which 
would not only contain the materials of all the encyclo- 
pedias of all the countries and in all the languages of 
the world, but go far beyond them all, gathering to- 
gether in one place information now scattered through 
many works—not a mere copying and rehashing of old 


FROM EVERYTHING TO NOTHING 21 


encyclopedias, but a new one based on dictionaries, 
manuals, and the most up-to-date and specialized 
_treatises on science, literatures, histories. 

This decision reached, I did not sit with my hands 
folded. My life at last had found a purpose. My 
long hours in the library had now a worthy and a 
definite objective in view. I set to work with fiery 
impatience. From that day on—it was July, and my 
vacation time at school—every word beginning with the 
letter “a” had for me the fascination of a friendly face. 
All those solid and compact encyclopedias, lined against 
the walls, all the big dictionaries, all the much-handled 
and thumb-worn indices, special lexicons, and thesauri, 
were taken down from their shelves and brought to my 
seat in the great hall that I might copy, rewrite, trans- 
late, devour them, with an avidity and eagerness even 
more intense. 

Oh, what a nuisance those slimy German rivers be- 
ginning with ‘““Aa”—they gave me no end of trouble! 
What a long list of titles had to be copied before I 
finished with a family of learned Dutchmen named van 
der Aa—! How endless and how tedious the enumera- 
tion of Latin abbreviations commencing with the letter 
A! But what a flood of tenderness came over me 
when I reached the far distant city of Abila that lay 
by the sea. I met books of law, for the first time, in 
compiling a self-satisfied treatise on a big word I was 
delighted to learn: abigeato—‘cattle stealing.” I read 
the Old Testament in search of Abigail, the pious, and 
of Abraham, the patriarch; I delved into the com- 


22 THE FAILURE 


mentators of Dante to unearth the life and crimes of 
Bocca degli Abati, the incendiary. I became an au- 
thority on the history of Abbiategrasso and on the 
geography of Abyssinia. 

I began by copying confusedly into note-books or on 
odd scraps of paper, later rewriting everything neatly 
on clean sheets, ruled and margined, which I bound 
with string. In the daytime at the library I just scrib- 
bled and scribbled—anything would do: my most hasty 
and ill-formed letters, with ink spots, abbreviations, 
cancelations, scrawls; but in the evening, at home, 
under the trembling light of a candle in my bedroom, 
my most careful and elegant “English round”—ink red 
and black, and a blotter under my left arm! What fun 
it was! No game, no ticket to the theater, could have 
attracted me away from that dim light where I sat 
hunched up over my encyclopedia; it is safe to wager 
that even the chance to see some wild animals in their 
cages at the fair—an excitement I loved above all 
else—would have had no effect on me at such mo- 
ments. 

But this undertaking—which so greatly magnified 
me, poor ignorant child that I was, in my own eyes, 
and even in the eyes of the library attendants who 
looked at me with a certain pity intermingled with 
irony and respect—began to lose interest for me, or 
rather actually to frighten me, because of the standard 
of absolute perfection which I had set myself. I had — 
been at work at least two months, passing my days 
under the sizzling skylights of one library, and my 


FROM EVERYTHING TO NOTHING ~23 


evenings under the arc-lights of another, or near the 
candle in my own room; and yet, writing as hard as 
I could, I had not succeeded in getting beyond the 
“words beginning with “Ad.” A long article on the 
wrathful Achilles bored me; I was skirting the Homeric 
question—standing on the brink of classical philology: 
several Greek words (I did not know Greek) baffled 
and humiliated me. . 

Reason came to the aid of my fatigue. I was just 
beginning at that time to dip into philosophy (in who 
can tell what perfidious books!), beginning after a 
fashion to think in a more systematic way, thinking 
much less crudely even than might have been expected 
of one of my age. Thus I came to realize that true 
knowledge did not consist, could not consist, in an 
alphabetical series of facts pillaged here and there and 
in all directions, nor of a room full of note-books and 
scraps of paper, mechanically set in order but lacking 
any breath of life and any thinking soul. 

I renounced the idea of the encyclopedia; yet, on 
the other hand, I determined not to fall into the trap 
of specialization. My brain, a true Don Juan of learn- 
ing, refused to concentrate on any one love. Nothing 
could satisfy me but the limitless, the magnificent, the 
total of all things, the fullness of the ages, the endless 
procession of the centuries—and of books. 

It occurred to me that history might be just the 
thing for me. 

I thought of history, naturally, on gigantic lines— 
history of everything, of all human activities (except, 


24 THE FAILURE 


perhaps, the sciences, which I could take up later for 
amusement). I never dreamed, of course, of a short 
history of any one epoch or any one people; it was to be 
a world history covering all ages and all races. To be 
sure, this new decision reduced my original plan by 
half; but what was left was quite big enough for a 
writer fifteen or sixteen at the most. 

So once again I set out on my way, studying, copying, 
compiling. 

I already knew Cantwt’s universal history and ad- 
mired it; for it had come to my aid on many occasions 
of intellectual embarrassment. But my plan was to 
write a book that should be more sound, more com- 
prehensive, more accurate. Besides, Cantu was a 
Catholic and a reactionary. My history would be 
rationalistic and revolutionary, since at that time I was, 
like my father, an atheist and a republican. 

The idea I had was the antiquated medieval notion 
of holding up a mirror to all things—but with more 
understanding and spiritual insight than the historians 
of old. Facts, facts, facts, all the facts there were, but 
linked one to another by a growing, an ascending, an 
evolving life, organized, unified, fixed by human 
thought, a thought ranging all the way from the blind 
instinct of self-preservation to the consciousness of the 
heroic futility of thought for thought’s sake! 

To begin with I plunged into the morass of Egyptian 
chronology and came out with an outline of the history 
of Egypt down to the time of the Alexandrians. I was 
about to pass on to the Chinese when I suddenly real- 


FROM EVERYTHING TO NOTHING =~ 25 


ized that my history was without a beginning! A com- 
plete history of the universe must start with the Crea- 
tion, not with the first written records merely. My 
limited knowledge of astronomy and geology had 
already given me a notion of marvelous antiquities, 
of perpetual disintegrations and rebirths of worlds. 
Unlike Cantu, I could not accept, word for word, the 
Seven Days’ Creation of the Hebrews, the “let there 
be light,” and the earthly paradise of ‘‘Genesis.”’ The 
story of the world’s inception had to be told, not ac- 
cording to Moses, but according to S-c-i-e-n-c-e! At 
that time Camille Flammarion and Charles Darwin 
represented science to me. The former led me back 
to Laplace, the latter to Lyell. And so there I was, 
suddenly turned astronomer, geologist, and anthro- 
pologist, serving up the world’s formation to modern 
taste. On many a night I strained my poor eyes— 
already near-sighted—trying to pierce the depths of 
the sky in search of one of those white nebule—vast 
whirlpools of stars and planets—about which the new 
cosmologists were spinning such marvelous yarns. 

When I had written—with a certain poetic license— 
the flaming epic of the solar system (and the slower 
moving history of the cooling of the earth’s crust), I 
suddenly reflected that I still had not done everything. 
I had given an account of the actual facts of the world’s 
creation, but said nothing of what men have dreamed 
and believed about the beginnings of things—and a 
history must omit nothing. 

So I turned from science to cosmogony; and this 


26 THE FAILURE 


conscientiousness of mine as a fifteen-year-old historian 
—not just facts but views and opinions about the facts 
—had a great effect on my studies. My curiosity 
branched in two directions. On the one hand I came 
to comparative literature, on the other to religion. To 
religion especially! There was no theogony, no cosmic 
myth, that I did not investigate, summarize and copy, 
to swell the beginnings of my history. 

No religion interested me so much, however, as that 
of the ancient Hebrews. We had an old Bible at home 
—one of those black covered editions which English 
Protestants were offering here in Italy thirty odd years 
ago, at half a lira (and no takers! ); and in it I reread 
all of “Genesis.”” The story did not satisfy me. At 
the library I got out the best known critiques on the 
Seven Days’ Creation, apologies of Catholic “con- 
cordists,” and heretics on the other side. I made my 
way through the long-winded notes and glosses of the 
polyglot Bibles. I skimmed, or read, witty and wicked 
pamphlets of the eighteenth century and seminary 
exegeses sauced in modern style to meet demands of 
candidates for the clergy who were not wholly dunces. 
I gloated over essays by Frenchmen, as clear and 
sparkling as champagne, and over monographs by Ger- 
man philosophers and “higher critics” as solid, as 
meaty, and as heavy as loaves of unleavened bread. 
And still I was unable to distinguish the truth from 
the sophism, the proved fact from the hypothesis. I 
also took another peep into the green volumes in the 
basket-library; and little by little I forgot the original 


FROM EVERYTHING TO NOTHING 27 


object of my research, to lose my way in the labyrinth, 
the tanglewood, the Slough of Despond, of Biblical in- 
_ terpretation. 

I took quite a fancy to the concordistic theory and 
had the patience to wade through the mountainous 
volume of a certain Pianciani, and after that the huge 
‘Hexameron of Stoppani, going on to other biological 
and scholastic disquisitions by various Jesuits bitten by 
the Darwinian bug. I remember that one observation 
occurred to me: all known commentaries on the Bible 
were made by priests, bishops, theologians, believers, 
bigots, whether Lutherans, Quakers, Waldensians, or 
Socinians. Lacking, however—so I believed, that is— 
was a commentary on the Bible made by a rationalist, 
by a man capable of viewing facts dispassionately, by 
a disinterested unbeliever, by a free unbiased spirit, one 
who would go through the Old and the New Testa- 
ments verse by verse and courageously bring to the 
bald light of day the errors, contradictions, lies, ab- 
surdities, proofs of cruelty, deception, rascality, stu- 
pidity, with which those pages said to be inspired by 
God are crammed. Such a commentary would, I 
thought, do more to undermine faith than all those 
atheistic philippics, all those dull pedantic controversies 
which comprise the greater part of modern anti- 
theology. 

“This commentary does not exist,” said I. “I will 
write it!” 

- By this time gigantic undertakings were failing to 
give me even a thrill; in comparison with the encyclo- 


28 THE FAILURE 


pedia of encyclopedias this new book was a trifle which 
I could toss off, so I thought, with the greatest ease— 
in a couple of years, at the most. I set to work in 
earnest. 

My first step was to get a Hebrew grammar; and 
in a few days I was writing large distorted letters of 
the Hebrew alphabet with some speed and copying 
verses of the Pentateuch from the original. Soon I had 
what seemed to me a huge pile of notes; and every 
morning and every afternoon the pile grew higher, till 
~ one day I thought I had enough. All this disheveled 
and unkempt erudition was getting on my nerves. I 
realized that I must be working it into some sort of 
shape at once, or I would be dropping it for good and 
all. 

So I wrote out the first verse of “Genesis” in Hebrew 
and began to set forth my commentary: “On the first 
day God created the heaven and the earth.” But I im- 
mediately found myself floundering around in the midst * 
of the biggest difficulties. This single verse contains 
two words which have always given the commentators 
much to stew about:—the Christians, in particular, 
translating them in their own manner to fit the the- 
ology laid down in the councils and by the fathers of 
the church. Does the text say “God” or “the gods,” 
“created” or “formed”? 

That is to say, were the first Jews monotheists or 
polytheists? Did they believe in a creation out of 
nothing, or did they think of God as a sort of sculptor 
who merely gave form to an unshapen substance not 


FROM EVERYTHING TO NOTHING 29 


created by Him and independent of Him? Knotty 
problems, I need not say, problems involving history, 
. philology, philosophy! But I was not dismayed. I 
began to write. 

I wrote, and wrote, and wrote; but still I could not 
get free of the mess; arguments pro, arguments con, 
assertions, denials, affirmations, rebuttals, piled up; 
quotations in three or four languages followed each 
other; philosophical and theological parentheses were 
opened, expanded, but rarely closed! My poor smat- 
tering of Hebrew was of little avail in this terrible 
crisis; I was forced to fall back upon the knowledge 
of others; and the only dependable authorities, in my 
judgment, were those who always put the priests in 
the wrong and gave the verdict to Reason! 

I was inclined to believe that the correct translation 
was “the gods formed”; but how convince others of 
that—convince them in such a way that they could 
not answer back? So again I wrote, and wrote, and 
wrote; but I never could get beyond that infernal 
verse of “Genesis” which will stick in my memory to 
my dying day. The more I wrote the more jumbled 
my ideas became. My brain was a whirl of glosses, 
etymologies, inductions, reservations, witticisms, which 
rioted together in a wild dance of hobgoblins to which 
I could find no rhyme nor reason. At last, at last, I 
got to the end. I had covered more than two hundred 
pages in a closely written hand. I was ready for the 
second verse: “‘And the earth was without form and 
void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. 


30 THE FAILURE 


And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the 
waters.” Here the pitfalls were not so numerous and 
the theologians fewer, but I still had many difficulties 
to cope with. I had to explain all that darkness and 
all that deep and to distinguish between the “spirit 
of God’ and the ‘‘idea of God” (the basis of the Alex- 
andrian trinity, this latter). The reference to “waters” 
brought me to early thinkers of Greece: to Hesiod and 
his theogony with the world rising out of the ocean; 
and to Thales, the sage of Miletus, who saw in water 
the first principle of all things. I was now splashing 
up to my neck in learning, even venturing a quotation 
now and then in Greek (what a thrill as I first set my 
trembling uncertain hand to copying letter by letter 
words in the divine characters of Plato! ). I wandered 
about in that wilderness of annotations, criticisms, 
elucidations, dissertations much as Adam must have 
done in his own private zoo and botanical garden at 
Eden. 

By dint of fast writing I came to the third verse: 
“And God said: let there be light. And there was 
light”—words that astounded even Longinus, the 
rhetorician, pagan that he was, when he came to 
them. But I was fresh from Bayle, Voltaire, and the 
author of the Veglie Filosofiche Semiserie; I felt no 
respect for them whatever! Rather it was amusement. 
What a joke on old Jehovah who was trying to palm 
His light off on us, forgetting that He hadn’t yet made 
the Sun! 

I never got as far as the fourth verse—I was already 


FROM EVERYTHING TO NOTHING - 31 


tired and bored. If three verses—properly done—took 
so much explaining, what would I need for the thou- 
. sands and thousands and thousands of verses in the 
whole Bible? It was better to go back to the old 
method of summing up and then attacking. I worked 
out a plan for a great polemic against faith in general 
and even went so far as to write several fragments of 
it out. It was, I remember, in a racy Tuscan style, 
with a tone of bantering, somewhat in the vein of 
Guerrazzi’s ‘“‘Ass,”’ which I was reading at that time 
with inexpressible relish. 

My “summa” of rationalism did not, however, get 
along very fast, because of the competition it suffered 
from other investigations I had undertaken at the 
same time, and which derived, like my excursion into 
higher criticism, from the famous first chapter of my 
still uncompleted history of the universe. 1 was so 
deeply interested in the cosmographies I had found in 
scriptural writings and in popular myths that I was 
eager to know more about the poetical forms they had 
assumed in more civilized ages; so, since I never did 
anything by halves, I had thrown myself upon the 
world’s literature, hunting down with the aid of his- 
tories and dictionaries such poems as dealt with the 
creation of the world. There were many of them. I 
read and copied them, as usual, deciding—as usual— 
to write a book on the subject. One poet after another 
enthralled me; I would pass on to their other writings, 
then to their contemporaries, until at last I was as in- 
fatuated with Oriental and Occidental literature as l 


32 THE FAILURE 


had previously been with the history of the world and 
with Biblical criticism. 

A history of all the world, of all human happenings, 
is too much, I thought—especially for a novice like me; 
but I can write a universal history of literature, not, 
as has been done up to the present time, by nations 
and century by century, but theme by theme. 

I determined on a comparative history of the world’s 
literature that was to be not only bibliographical, but 
arranged according to substance and subject matter. 
A vast research, therefore, of indexes, catalogues, titles; 
countless notes on legends and poetic motives; drawers 
full of fiches. My scope was now somewhat narrowed, 
but it was still broad enough to satisfy my hankering 
for the universal. After some months of zealous and 
disordered exploring I came to realize that again I had 
undertaken a task too big, too beset with difficulties, to 
be brought to a happy conclusion. To execute my 
plan would have required the knowledge of many lan- 
guages and tens and tens of years of uninterrupted 
reading. A history such as I dreamed of was not a 
matter of titles galore; I would have to study the books 
themselves, read them page by page and several times, 
to discover sources and establish comparisons. 

Another renunciation forced upon me—my fifth or 
sixth fiasco. So I resolved to confine myself only to 
the literatures most closely related to my own, the lit- 
eratures of the Romance languages. Of these I would 
write a comparative history with an ultimate view to 
teaching them. 


FROM EVERYTHING TO NOTHING 33 


So I blossomed out as a desperate and persistent 
Romance philologist. I was a great reader of philologi- 
‘cal reviews, a great decipherer of manuscripts, an as- 
siduous auditor at special lectures, and a demon for 
handbooks, Grundrisse, and bibliographies. I got a 
fairly systematic view of French and Italian litera- 
tures. But I was most attracted by the least known 
-and appreciated of the Romance languages, Spanish. 
Some time before, through a small grammar for which 
I had paid three cents, I had learned to read Castilian 
and had even translated several scenes from “The Mar- 
velous Magician” (El Magico Prodigioso) of Calderon. 
But now I took the books of Amador de los Rios and of 
the American, Ticknor, as my guides. I dug up 
“earliest texts”? from the fuero of Avila to the latest 
romances. I racked my brain over “The Mystery of 
the Magian Kings,” and was charmed by the Poema 
del Cid. I specialized on Gonzalo de Berceo, the monk, 
and steeped myself in the savory wit of the Archpriest 
of Hita. Nor did I stop there: I examined, and read 
in part, all the volumes of the Biblioteca of Rivade- 
neyra; I unearthed Catalan, Castilian, and Portuguese 
manuscripts; I almost mastered ‘“‘old” Spanish; I con- 
sidered making a number of “critical editions.”” Books 
which I was unable to buy, I copied by hand, entire; 
and at last—the usual ending and one more defeat—I 
abandoned my idea of a comparative history of 

Romance literatures in favor of a complete and per- 
fect manual on the history of Spanish letters. 

Of this too I wrote the first chapters. I went back 


34 THE FAILURE 


to the Iberians and the Romans. I followed the ad- 
ventures of the Goths, the invasions of the Arabs, the 
rise of the vulgar tongue. I actually got down as far 
as the “earliest documents.” I broke off my narrative 
when my critique of the Poema del Cid was in full 
swing. Other thoughts, other studies—thoughts and 
studies having little to do with erudition—had come 
into my head. My history of Spanish literature was 
my last adventure as a compiler and a scholar—a de- 
plorable adventure, the last phase of a degeneration 
of the catastrophic rapidity of which I had not been 
aware. 

From the universal to the special, from unlimited 
knowledge to a universal history, from a universal his- 
tory to a critique of religion, from higher criticism to 
a comparative history of universal literature, thence to 
a comparative history of Romance literatures, and ulti- 
mately to a single literature, and to practically one 
period of that literature. Through partial failures, 
exclusions, curtailments, restrictions, I, who had set 
out to know everything, to teach everything, had come 
to a point where I was proud and satisfied with insig- 
nificant quibbles of philology and bibliography, not only 
in a single furrow, but in a small corner of a single 
furrow—I, to whom the whole unplowed field had 
seemed too little for my eager desire to labor! 

And all my life, even in later years, has been the 
same—a perpetual reaching out for the Whole, for 
the Universe, only to fall back to Nothing—to a humble 


FROM EVERYTHING TO NOTHING 35. 


seat on the grass behind a garden hedge. My life has | 
been a succession of vast ambitions and hasty renuncia- 
‘tions. This brief account of my boyish efforts is one 
among the possible explanations of the secret of my 
life. 


Chapter 5: The Triumphal Arch 


! I was born with the disease of greatness in my brain. 

| My memory goes back particularly to a time when I 
must have been eight or nine years old. I was keeping 
very much to myself in those days and spent many an 
hour over a stupid school book, full of wretched illus- 
trations and daubs in a violet-colored ink. In it one 
day I came across a narrative of Petrarch’s coronation 
at the Capitol in Rome. I read and reread the story. 
“Me too! Me too!” I cried to myself, without even 
knowing just why a crown was crammed upon the head 
of the fat and stodgy poet. Nevertheless, the round, 
ill-drawn face of the lamentful sonneteer seemed to 
look up from the dirty page and smile encouragement 
at me from beneath its cleric’s cowl with the halo of 
pointed leaves. 

I moved heaven and earth to get my father to take 
me to the Viale dei Collti; and up there one day I 
plucked a couple of branches from an evergreen I 
found. I was not quite sure it was the far-famed 
laurel—but that detail mattered little. When I reached 
home I shut myself up in the little garret at the rear 
of the house—the one containing the basket-library. I 
wound the branches into a wreath and placed it on my 
head; then throwing a large piece of red cloth over my 


shoulders, I began circling round and round the room, 
36 


THE TRIUMPHAL ARCH 37 


_ keeping close to the walls, chanting a long rigmarole 
that I thought sounded tremendously eloquent and 
"heroic, all the while beating on a wooden box with the 
handle of a knife. That was my way of “ascending 
the Campidoglio” in pomp and splendor,—the hideous 
noise, which I seemed to find indispensable, probably 
standing for the applause of an admiring throng. At 
any rate, on that gray winter’s morning I celebrated 
my own mock espousal with immortality. 

But the first real promise I made to myself was not 
until later, when I was fifteen or sixteen, I believe. It 
was about four o’clock on a stifling August afternoon. 
Melancholy and alone (as always), I was walking with 
lowered head down one of the longest and broadest 
streets of my native city. I was tired, bored, dis- 
couraged, disgusted with the heat and with mankind. 
In my hand I had a newspaper, purchased with con- 
siderable embarrassment to my resources. 

It was the hour after the siesta, when people come 
stumbling sleepily out into the open in a foolish hope 
of finding a breath of fresh air in the evening cool. 
Here were nurses, in white aprons with bows in their 
hair, carrying crimson-faced babies that were crying 
and squawling in their lace ruffles; here were perspir- 
ing husbands with wives clinging to their arms; here 
were brothers and sisters swinging along hand in hand; 
young men by twos or threes with white cigarettes 
hanging from their lips; girls with bright-colored ker- 
chiefs on their heads, their flirtatious eyes brimming 
with gaiety and mischievous exuberance; old men in 


38 THE FAILURE 


top coats, with blue umbrellas tucked under their arms; 
and poor soldiers in dark uniforms awkward and self- 
conscious in the regulation white cotton gloves they 
were compelled to wear. The crowds grew larger and 
larger, filling the sidewalks. People began crossing 
and recrossing the streets, laughing, bowing, calling 
greetings to one another. Under the rims of great 
flowered hats the eyes of the women shone like black 
diamonds. Every now and then small round straw 
hats were raised above the heads of the multitude in 
salutation to these beauties. 

; I was ill at ease in all that animation. I knew 
‘nobody and I hated everybody. I was shabbily 
‘ dressed. I was ugly. My face was pale and stern 
\ with discontent. I felt that no one loved me, and 

that no one could love me. The few who noticed me 

In passing did not conceal their dislike of me; some, 

impressed with my truly unusual ugliness, turned for 

ja second look and laughed. I was a special mark for 

‘the cruelty of pretty young girls dressed in white and 
-red, with brown skins and pearly white teeth, who 

were forever raising a laugh behind my back. Per- 

haps they were not always laughing at me, but at the 
time I thought they were and suffered accordingly. 
All the things that made life beautiful to others 
seemed to be denied to me. I alone was without love. 
I alone was without money. If any of these people 
gave me a thought it was one of scorn. They walked 
peacefully, indifferently by, caring nothing for the 


THE TRIUMPHAL ARCH 39 


_ sufferings of the poor thoughtful youth against whom 
they brushed. — 

"Then, all of a sudden, I rebelled. My blood boiled | 
up within me, my whole being travailed in upheaval. | 
“No, no, no!” I cried out to myself. “This must not’ 
be! I tooamaman! I too must be great and happy. 

_ What do you think you are, you brainless men and 

- powdered females, who pass me by so contemptuously? 

I'll show you what I can do. I shall be more than 

you, more than all of you, above every one of you. I 

am small, poor, ugly, but I have a soul too, and my 

soul will make such a noise that you will be forced to 
stop and listen to me. Then I will be somebody and 
you will continue to be nobodies. I will create, I will 
achieve, I will think, I will be greater than the great— 
while you will continue to eat, and sleep, and walk the 
sidewalks as you are doing to-day. When I pass, every 

one will look at me; beautiful women will have a 

glance for me as well; laughing girls will edge close 

to me and touch my hand, trembling; and stiff and 
dignified celebrities will lift their hats, holding them 
high above their heads when I appear; I, in person, 

I, the great man, I, the genius, I, the hero.” 

As these thoughts flashed through my mind I raised 
my head; my chest swelled; my eyes, no longer fearful, 
looked with pride and hatred into the white and yellow 
and brown faces that swept by me. I was a different 
person; and I believe that at that moment I was a 
handsomer person. 


40 THE FAILURE 


Still under the enchantment of this mood I came 
into a large open square, where a triumphal arch rose, 
surmounted by a chariot with galloping horses clean- 
cut against a flaming sunset sky. I stopped and gazed 
up at them; and then and there made a vow to myself 
| —a vow that before I died I would achieve FAME! 


Chapter 6: Poverty 


In those days I was poor, decently but cruelly poor. 4 
(I have always hated and I still hate people born with 
money in their pockets and able to buy what they want 
when they want it.) Mine was a respectable poverty; 
I was never cold, never hungry—but I suffered. 

It did not matter so much that I wore my father’s old 
‘clothes—threadbare, shiny, spotted—with invisible 
patches deftly inserted in the seats and in the knees | 
of my trousers; that my hats had broken rims and 
crowns; that I wore my shoes until they were too small 
for me and had been mended and resoled many times. 
Such pleasures as I had were rare and simple. My 
childish longings for good things to eat were satisfied 
with a penny’s worth of figs or cherries in summer, 
and a few roasted chestnuts or a bit of chestnut cake 
in winter time. Once a year, maybe twice, according 
as invitations did or did not come, I went to the theater 
(Punch and Judy) or to a café (ice cream). One Sun- 
day every summer we went picnicking, always in the 
same place—a string of puddles called a river, dry 
stones, cane-brakes, sun-scorched meadows, fried fish. 

And yet this cheap miserable life of a wretched 
middle class family gave me no actual suffering except 
for lack of real money, money of my own, money that 

4I 


42 THE FAILURE 


I could spend in my own way for things that I wanted 
to buy. Those who have fathers in comfortable cir- 
cumstances and mothers who never say “no”; those 
who have fat purses in their pockets and penny banks 
at their bedsides; boys, with appetites bigger than 
themselves, who have wasted who knows how many lire 
on whistles, jackknives, marbles, pictures, cakes, ba- 
nanas, and trash, cannot conceive of my suffering as 
a child, as a boy, as a youth, up to the time I was 
almost twenty, for not until then did I have a ten 
lire bill that I could call my own—because I had 
earned it. 

Yet I needed money more than other boys and for 
quite other things. First of all I needed books—there 
were so few at home and I had a long time to wait 
before I was old enough to get into a library; I needed 
newspapers (from my earliest days those time-killers 
have lured me); I needed writing paper, pens, ink. 
Nothing much, to be sure, matters each of a cent or 
two! But I lacked just that cent or two. My father 
gave me nothing, and he was right: he had all he 
could do keeping so many of us fed and clothed. 
Every now and then he bought a book from some 
huckster, but never more than two or three in a year. 
As time went on he gave me an allowance of a lira and 
a half a month (a soldo, a cent, a day! )—to indulge 
my vices—as they say in our Italian families. My 
“vices” were paper vices—ruled paper and printed 
paper. 

What could I do then? How find the money I 


POVERTY | 43 


wanted, the money I had to have at all costs to buy the 
things I needed to keep my soul from starving? I re- 
sorted to many devices, first of all to saving. I 
was given two soldi—two cents—a day for lunch at 
recess. I spent seven centesimi. ‘That left me three 
_ centesimt, which, at the end of a week—there were five 
days of school—amounted to three soldi: the price of 
one volume of the ‘People’s Library” or three quires 
of ruled paper. Then there was my mother. She 
was more merciful than my father—as mothers ought 
to be. She saw and appreciated my needs. Yet she, 
poor soul, did not have much more than I—only what 
my father left her from day to day for household ex- 
penses. However, by dint of unheard-of scrimping and 
saving she found a way to give me two, three, some- 
times even four soldi a week, four pennies that vanished 
like magic into illustrated books, ruled paper (ruled up 
and down as well as from right to left, since then I 
could get more writing on it), or literary magazines. 

I had still a third recourse—stealing; and I am not 
ashamed to confess it. For many years I cautiously 
but continuously practised domestic thievery. Under 
cover of the darkness, in the early morning when my 
father was still asleep, I would succeed in stealing a 
few pennies from the pocket of his vest that hung on 
a hook in the hall. Then again I would keep the 
change from things I was sent to the store to buy—if 
my father forgot to ask for it. If he didn’t forget, I 
would tell him I had spent more than I really had or 
that I had lost the money on the road. I would get 


44 THE FAILURE 


scolded on such occasions but I thought it worth the 
trouble; I got so much pleasure from the few pennies 
I had safely stowed away. 

I even tried to earn money, though without much 
success. I collected wrapping paper and sold it. I 
gathered peach stones. I bought and sold canceled 
stamps. But all this was hard work and the recom- 
pense very small. 

And yet in spite of my economies, my mother’s com- 
passion, my cheating, and my honest business ventures, 
it often happened that I did not have a penny in my 
pocket—not even enough to buy a newspaper. These 
were the days when I would tear the blank pages from 
my books or leaves from the exercises at school to 
get paper to write on; the days when I would pour 
vinegar upon the sediment at the bottom of my ink- 
well to get something that would wet my pen; the sad 
days when, longer than was my wont, I would hang 
around the street corners reading the half columns of 
the folded newspapers, or slyly peering into the shop 
windows at the pages of books that chanced to be open. 

Oh! the depth of my sufferings during those days— 
days gray and cold, days of solitude and hopeless 
misery! How I despaired when the paper I had was 
spongy and soaked up my pale ink as if with a malevo- 
lent intent to confuse words and thoughts; when the 
point of my pen (the only one in the house) would 
break and refuse to move across the paper; when I 
would meet a stubborn bookseller who would not give 


POVERTY 45 


me a book for a penny or two less when I had just too 
little money to pay the full price. 

In spite of subterfuge, entreaty, deceit, I was always 
the poor boy, the poor silent boy whom no one likes 
to have about. In the book stores they paid but little 
_ attention to me when I asked the price of a book; for 
they knew in advance that I had centeswmi, not lire, to 
spend; the hucksters did not like to have me hanging 
about looking through their wares and reading fur- 
tively as I did so; for most of the time I bought noth- 
ing, or at best loose odds and ends that went for little 
or nothing, or even volumes with pages gone. News- 
dealers always scowled at me, because I was always 
trying to read their papers on the sly without buying 
one. ; 

I recall with unfailing pride the many humiliations 
of those years. How many times I passed up and 
down in front of a show window looking adoringly at 
some longed-for book, not having the courage to ask 
the price of it! How many times I felt of the pennies 
in my pocket, counting them over and over for fear of 
having fewer than I thought or of having lost them— 
at last, timidly entering the shop, and standing silently, 
my face pale, until the proprietor was alone, before I 
dared to breathe the name of the author, the title, of 
the book. They all looked down on me in those days, 
booksellers, their clerks, my schoolmates, my rela- 
tives, everybody. I was an ugly, lanky boy, taciturn, 
ill-clad, with squinting near-sighted eyes, my pockets 


46 THE FAILURE 


bursting with papers, my hands dirty with ink, my 
mouth drawn down on either side with heavy furrows 
of pain and anger, my forehead already cut with its 
deep vertical wrinkle. 

And yet what did I ask for? Was it to be dressed 
up like the model boys of the pious illustrations, with 
neat clothes and starched turn-down collars? Was it 
to fill my stomach with big meals and sweets between 
meals to the point of vomiting or bellyache? Did I 
ask for castles to live in, trips to the resorts, guns, 
wooden horses, or puppet shows? 

I was ugly and repulsive, that I know, as I knew it 
then—yet underneath that ugliness and that suffering 
there was a soul that wanted to know, to know the 
truth, to bask in the sunlight, and steep itself in the 
sunlight, of beauty; and under that greasy hat and 
under that uncombed hair there was a mind eager to 
grasp every idea, every secret, every dream, a mind 
that already saw what others did not see and found 
milk and honey where the majority found emptiness 
and desolation. Why did no one understand and give 
me something it was my right to have? 

However, I do not regret all that misery; nor am I 
ashamed of my past humiliations. A life of ease might 
possibly have made me less courageous, less intense, 
and in the end, far poorer. The unceasing bitterness 
of one who has nothing, and cannot hope to have any- 
thing, held me aloof from others, forced my soul 
through the mill of pain, polishing it, sharpening it, 
rendering it a worthier steel. 


Chapter 7: My Tuscany 


I OWE my soul, my spiritual being, to the trees and to 
- the mountains of my native soil no less than to books 
and to minds of the past. The country has been as 
much of an education to me as any library. A definite, 
a particular stretch of.country, I mean; all that is 
poetic, melancholy, gray, solitary in my nature, comes 
to me from the rural landscape of Tuscany, from the 
hills and fields that lie about the city of Florence. 

Every Sunday, from the time I could walk, my 
father, a man of few words but of mental attainments 
far superior to his station in life, took me for a jaunt 
fuor di porta, “beyond the gates,” as we say in Flor- 
ence. We would start off after dinner, alone, never 
exchanging a word. He knew certain out-of-the-way 
paths where we could idle along by the hour, rarely 
meeting a soul. Once in a while a priest, a peasant, 
or an old woman would come along; but a greeting, a 
wave of the hand, and we went our ways. 

Father was almost always silent and distraught, 
while I would be turning over one of my precocious 
fiascos in my mind or ingenuously elaborating some 
new idea. But I had eyes in my head, and they were 
open. From over the tops of the walls flanking the 
road hung tangled branches of gray olive trees; wild 
roses, dwarfed, neglected, twined their way over the 

47 


48 THE FAILURE 


sides, the faded withered blossoms dropping their petals 
one by one to rot in the ditches below. How many 
miles I walked along those walls—walls that I can still 
see before my eyes; low walls that almost invited one 
to sit down on them; damp walls spotted with lichens 
and emerald-colored mildew or stained a shining black 
where the water seeped through cracks; high walls with 
great black trees, broadening out into heavy foliage at 
the tops—props, as it were, for some magic hanging 
garden. Just outside the city the walls were new, 
freshly stuccoed and ornamented with rustic designs 
such as common bricklayers might think of. Every 
now and then we would come to the gate of some villa 
—gates tightly locked and barred, with watchdogs leap- 
ing, barking, at us; open gates with cypress trees like 
sentinels standing guard on either side and, beyond, 
paths sloping upward between laurel and myrtle 
bushes. Here and there the walls came to an end and 
hedges of tall live-thorn bushes filled the gaps, white 
with frost and snow in the winter, white with blossoms 
in the springtime, and in the late summer black with 
thimble-berries. Still further on, the walls and hedges 
disappeared and the road, deserted, stony, like the con- 
vent roads of mountain regions, wound its way up- 
grade among cypresses and pines. At last I could lcok 
downward, and I would see deep valleys, dewy fields, 
misty distances, an illusion of the Infinite, in short. 
For me it was all like a new birth. Up there, only 
up there, with the wind in my face, bareheaded, my 
hat in my hand, with no definite thought in my mind, 


MY TUSCANY 49 


I felt that I was living as I should have liked always to 
live. No sooner did we turn down toward home again 
- than again sadness would settle on my heart, and the 
deepening twilight, with its far-off, almost inaudible 
ringing of bells, would intensify my melancholy with 
waves of pungent anguish. Not to lose the spirit of 
freedom and freshness of that world entirely, I would 
always take a piece of it home with me; a wrinkled, 
shiny black olive found deep down among some leaves; 
an acorn in its rough cup; a chip of stone, jagged and 
sharp like some Alpine mountain ridge; a hard green 
pine cone; a tuft of pine needles; cypress berries; a 
chestnut; a gallnut. I loved everything that was simple 
and rugged, things that breathed of solitude and harsh- 
ness, of a life that was wholesome and in no need of 
hot-houses or gardeners. 

I was not born for the rich and luxuriant countries | 
of the South or of the tropics, for brilliantly colored 
and highly perfumed flowers, for over-luscious fruits, 
for sunshine. The country that I love, the country that 
I feel, is my own country, the campagna of Tuscany, 
where I learned to breathe and to think. A poor, a 
bare, a gray, a silent country, without adornment, with- 
out flamboyant colors, without pagan perfumes and 
pagan garlands—and yet so intimate, so friendly, so 
well suited to delicate sensibilities, so congenial to the, 
meditations of lonesome souls! A country monastic, 
ascetic, Franciscan in its harsh, its black severity, ill 
concealing its bony skeleton under a robe of green! A 
country where great, bare brown mountains rise 


50 THE FAILURE 


abruptly, almost menacingly, over smiling fruitful val- 
leys—the sweet and sentimental country of my child- 
hood, the solid, stimulating, moral country of my 
youth! Oh, my Tuscany! In the strong, sturdy, 
fserene baldness of your rocks, with your simple 
straightforward wild flowers, with your courageous 
cypresses, your stern oaks, your stinging brambles, 
how much more beautiful you seemed to me than the 
far-famed countries of the South, with their palms 
and their oranges and their figs and their white dust 
shining under a raging summer sun! 

We went out in all seasons; but when my memories 
are most vivid I see only winter, autumn, and rainy 
springtimes: biting winds, skies overcast, unbroken, 
dense and gray; the cold, frowning serenity of an earth 
that is toiling and brooding in its depths. I never see 
sunshine; I never feel warmth; occasionally I see a 
misty, weepy sun peering through a gap in racing 
clouds to make the dark drear earth darker and drear- 
ier than it was before. I see my country as under a 
cold northern sky, with the grim meditative calmness 
and solitude of the dying year, when the last forgotten. 
leaf has curled and shriveled on the dried branches of 
the vines. 

I well remember short windy January and Febru- 
ary days when we walked away briskly up hard frozen 
roads that resounded with our footsteps, the walls on 
either hand sending back the echoes, under a sky 
flecked with streamers of high white cloud. I would 
come back home, my feet tingling, my cheeks aflame 


MY TUSCANY | 51 


from the long hard marching, vigorous and vibrant as 
if I were returning from a victory. But then our dark 
miserable house, my cold disordered room—a sort of 
morgue it seemed to be in the dim light of one tiny 
brass lamp—would plunge me back into a sense of 
mediocrity, slavery, death. I would pick up a book 
and begin to read by that faint sepulchral light. Inch 
by inch my body would grow cold, my feet numb, my 
gloom more and more despondent, till I would throw 
myself on my bed to bury in slumber all my unex- 
pressed desires, all my vague yearnings, for a life ut- 
terly unlike the life about me—and, for that matter, 
‘utterly unlike any other life. 









cys ‘ 


life of the lowlands.” 
bt IBSEN. 








Chapter 8: I Discover Evil 


My wild and precociously introspective childhood; my 
morose and vengeful aloofness from people—born of 
my shyness, my “peculiarity,” my poverty; the oft- 
repeated defeats suffered by an encyclopedic method 
conceived on too ambitious scales; my mournful, ele- 
giac day-dreaming, indulged, to a vice, on my walks 
along gray roads, between blackened walls, beneath 
leaden skies; my confused outreachings toward a life 
that should be heroic, worthy, full of beauty and poetry 
—impulses that were immediately thwarted, stifled by 
the hideous, humdrum, every-day reality of a petty, 
narrow, cramped, mortifying, provincial existence,—all 
developed into a desperate, uncommunicative pessi- 
mism, as frowning and self-contained as a fortress with- 
out windows. As the boy was becoming the man in 
me, my intellect too became of age, demanding an ac- 
counting of life—-and receiving no answer. ‘Theory 
supervened to give form to my melancholy. The sad- 
ness—physical, absolute—of those Sunday afternoons 
of winter was followed by a searching inquiry into the 
evils and the goods of existence. The spirit within me 
answered ‘‘no” to every promise, “no” to every false 
dream, “no” to every specious pleasure, blowing with 
a chill breath upon my last lingering illusions as the 
55 


56 THE FAILURE 


midnight wind blows on the last flickering flame of an 
unfilled street lamp. 

The languor of long vigils spent in feverish reverie 
—when people try to pity themselves, quite beyond 
reason, as they will never pity any other living soul!— 
prompted a deep searching into the nature of pain and 
the brevity of our joys, striking a balance between 
earthly happiness and unhappiness. ‘Tearful sonnets 
on sunsets and on the sadness of autumn gave way to 
a firm determination to cry out publicly and rationally 
against a sheep-like acceptance of life. 

At that time the perennial foolish question pro- 
pounded itself to me in the same terms and in the same 
way it has recurred in all ages to all souls weary of 
the world: Is life worth living? 

What could I answer? Life promised me little and 
was giving me nothing. I could not hope for riches nor 
for success in a profession, since, from the very start, 
force of circumstances had limited me to a few years 
of mediocre schooling; I could not hope for the love 
of women because I was ugly and shy; I could not 
hope for unlimited learning, for my many thwarted 
undertakings in that direction pained and dismayed 
me. Few people paid any attention to me at all, and 
no one loved me except my father and mother—worlds 
removed they were from the soul which they had 
created, a soul that must have seemed a total stranger 
to them. 

Nothing was left to me but thought; I had always 
liked to generalize, to associate apparently unrelated 


I DISCOVER EVIL 57 


facts, to divine laws, to pull theories to pieces and put 
them together again. A short time before, fresh from 
" Vico’s ““New Science” (which I had imperfectly under- 
stood), I had decided to write a philosophy of the his- 
tory of literature; for I imagined that I had discovered 
the secret of the ebbs and flows of art, the causes of 
growths and decays in literature. Even at that early 
age I was under the spell of Taine, who was opening 
new vistas to my mind, filling me with envy for the 
facile art he had of building up clear, orderly, sym- 
metrical systems of ideas with a fact or two thrown 
in for shading between the lines. Already the demon 
of theory was lying in wait for the young poet in me, 
stuffing my mouth with sweeping statements, broad 
judgments, inferences and inductions faultlessly rea- 
soned with all their corollaries. 

So I set my thinking machine to work upon this 
miserable thing called life—a joyless life that knew no 
carnivals of happiness, a life as yet uncharted, without 
beacons, without guide-posts. And it did not take me 
long to discover its emptiness and its smothered an- 
guish. Was that all there was to it? For every desire 
a rebuff, for every aspiration a denial, for every effort 
a slap in the face, for all that craving for happiness 
which a boy of sixteen or eighteen feels, a promise of 
—nothing. Nothing! Nothing masked under a hun- 
dred disguises! Faith, fame, art, achievement, para- 
dise, victory—so many masks for a reality of despair— 
eye-holes without eyes, mouth-holes without lips, kisses 
without requital! 


58 THE FAILURE 


Life to be bearable must be lived intensely. Through 
it a continuous stream of emotion passes. ‘Though that 
emotion is ever changing as flowing water changes, it at 
least bears us along on a current that gives the illusion 
of continuity and permanence. But analyze life, tear 
its trappings off, lay it bare with thought, with logic, 
with philosophy, and its emptiness is revealed as a 
bottomless pit; its nothingness frankly confesses to 
nothingness, and Despair comes to perch in the soul 
as the Angel perched on the sepulcher left empty by 
the Son of God. 

So it happened with me; and with all the ardor of 
a growing youth I fortified myself in a negation of life. 
My response—the only one possible at the time—to 
the wicked injustice of my lot, to the cold and silent 
hostility of men, was a confirmed belief in the infinite 
futility of all things, in the congenital rascality, the 
complete and irremediable unhappiness, of the human 
race. 

My pessimism, though I proclaimed it and believed 
it to be of a most thoroughgoing kind, was not, how- 
ever, consistent and did not go as far as it might and 
should have gone. It was, at first, sentimental, poetic, 
literary. The inveterate encyclopedist and the bud- 
ding bard within me divided the task between them. 
My discovery of life’s unhappiness became, in its turn, 
a pretext for new compilations. As I read I collected 
the outbursts of poets, the “lines” of dramatists, the 
epigrams of orators, the admonitions of preachers, the 
aphorisms of philosophers (and pseudo-philosophers), 


I DISCOVER EVIL | 59 


which, directly or indirectly, explicitly or by implica- 
tion, revealed or, lamented the futility of life, the pre- 
dominance of evil, the pathos of dreams disappointed, 
of illusions dispelled, of broodings over a past irretriev- 
ably lost; the desperation that bends and breaks the 


soul when we have looked at life from every angle, 


only to find it a tiny and barely perceptible island in 
the infinite whirlpool of Nothingness. I gathered to- 
gether a formidable thesaurus of gloom articulate, in 
which sarcasms, witticisms, laments, and mournings of 
men far separated in space, time, and spirit found 
themselves huddled together in an agonizing chorus of 
human discontent. 

It was not merely a matter of literary curiosity 
either; I was sincere. It gave me confidence to find 
all that distress and all that cursing in others. I no 
longer felt alone in the world. I had met brothers at 
last, men born to be comrades with me—the Consoling 
Dead. After all, I could not be wrong in my negation! 
My protest was not merely the cowardly whine of a 
boy wrecked by impotence and disordered dreams. 

I not only made anthologies of sayings and quota- 
tions, but I also planned to write a book, the book, on 


life—a book which would bring all men to hold them- 


selves and others and Existence as a whole in a much 
deserved contempt. It was during those days that I 


- came in contact for the first time with a great philoso- 


pher; I skimmed, I read, I pondered Schopenhauer, in 


_ Selections, in fragments, at various intervals, but deeply 


enough to understand that a facile mastery of text- 


60 ™ THE FAILURE 


books on geology and evolution was not the topmost 
height to which a searching intelligence might soar. 
I attempted to outline a history of Pessimism, and so 
I spent long industrious days in the study of philoso- 
phy, where, as was inevitable, I found other ideas, be- 
side these negative and gloomy ones, to attract my 
attention and rouse my curiosity. 

The bookworm in me was no longer working alone; 
at his side was a theorist waxing older and stronger. 
The construction of my system of Pessimism (based 
on the law that the more desirable ends are just the 
ones that are of necessity unattainable) was attended 
by intellectual joys hitherto almost unknown to me. 
I did not forget, of course, to go to extremes and to 
encompass totality. JI did not approve of Schopen- 
hauer’s hostility to suicide. On the contrary I planned 
to end my book with a stoical proposal of universal 
suicide—and not merely to be smart; I saw no other 
way out of it. Individual suicide—well, no! That I 
found ridiculous, futile. Suicide en masse, rather; de- 
liberate, well considered, by unanimous consent! ‘Thus 
the world would be left all to itself to roll its stupid 
course through the heavens. I thought of founding a 
society which would grow and expand simultaneously 
with the sales of my book. When this League of Dis- 
consolates had converted and enrolled all humanity 
down to the last man, the great day would finally be 
chosen, and—finis! I had even decided on the means 
—poison seemed to me preferable beyond dispute. 

Nonsense, fancies of a child, if you wish! Yet the 


I DISCOVER EVIL | 61 


fixed idea that I was to be the apostle of this supreme 
settlement of the problem of life was, for a time, the 
only excuse I could find for existence. I consented to 
live only because of the ridiculous hope I had that 
ultimately I could make all men die with me. 


Chapter 9: Others 


I was no longer alone. Toward the end of my teens 
I emerged from my somber isolation as a child, which 
had been the means of saving my soul from the pre- 
cocious deviltry of most boys of my age. I too hada 
heart. I felt that I had something to say, and I wanted 
to say it, to talk, to give some vent to my feelings. 
Up to that time all the pent-up affection which per- 
meated every fiber of my being I had directed upon 
myself. My own experience had engaged my emotions 
—self-pity, compassion for my own unfortunate life, 
without purpose, without escape. In many pathetic 
verses—wretched things written both in Italian and 
in French—I had called on death to come to me, and 
I had wept over my imminent and pitiable demise. In 
the stillness of the night, meditating on the unhappi- 
ness of my lot, which closed every door and denied 
every joy to me, I shed hot silent tears; and during 
the day the clothes I wore—invariably black—and the 
expression on my face seemed to be a sort of mourn- 
ing in advance for my own funeral. 

| I was in need of affection. I wanted to feel a hand 
‘in my hand, to be listened to and to listen. I wanted 
some friend to whom, in secret, in the ease, in the un- 
forgettable relaxation, of friendship, I could confid 


those emotions, desires, and thoughts which cannot be 
62 


OTHERS ty 63 


confessed to mothers or to fathers. I wanted some 
one of my own age to work with; some one older than 
I to help me, advise me, keep me from mistakes; some 
one younger than I whom I in turn could help, guide, 
and counsel. | 

I scanned faces, I looked into hearts; but most of 
the time I found only tolerance or disdain, or even 
worse—that unpleasant and too facile intimacy of ill- 
mannered youths—the ‘bad company” of tradition— 
who slip their arms through yours and talk to you of 
women and bicycles. My schoolmates were, to speak 
quite frankly, unendurable to me: self-satisfied, self- 
pampering philistines in short trousers; pale-faced, 
round-shouldered ‘‘grinds”; loud-mouthed, overbearing 
bullies—not to mention that sleek, detestable, self- 
righteous sham and ninny called “the head of the 
class.” No, that was not what I wanted. I wanted 
warm hearts and, above all, active, open minds—boys 
like myself who did not shine so conspicuously in the 
class room, but who read, thought, and pondered, who 
asked unusual questions and played with strange and 
capricious dreams. There was just one such in my 
school; but he was a teacher, not one of the boys—a 
teacher by necessity, a poet by nature. Young and 
of generous impulses himself, he managed to divine in 
my features and in my words the soul that said noth- 
ing to other people. His coming into my life was like 
the rising of the first star on a lingering afterglow. He 
encouraged my poetic tendencies. He sympathized 
with the motives of my groping, vagrant wanderings 


64 THE FAILURE 


in the field of literary research; and though far wiser 
and far more learned than I, he treated me as an equal. 
He was the first to recognize a man in the stray child 
I was. 

But cordial though this paternal friendship might be, 
- it was not enough to satisfy me. I was looking for 
young people, boys like myself. I looked so diligently 
that in a few years my efforts were rewarded: I be- 
came a member of several “groups,” or literary coter- 
ies, which seemed to me, in the beginning at least, to 
be veritable feasts, veritable paradises, of intelligence. 

I first threw in my lot with two students, both older 
and more advanced in their studies than I (they had 
done Latin and even Greek); and together we organ- 
ized a sort’of literary society called “The Trinity.” 
We drew up a constitution in due form and named the 
officers. Each of us had some title or other in the 
organization. A by-law required us, each in turn, to 
put forward a thesis in the form of a memorial to be 
read and discussed by the remaining two. ‘They, of 
course, under penalty of disgrace, were bound to take 
the opposite view. When my turn came, I filled a 
notebook of more than a hundred pages with a captious 
and violent criticism of Manzoni’s novel, “The Be- 
trothed.” The book had always been a bore to me, 
since the time when I had spent a whole school year 
making a logical and grammatical analysis of the quite 
commonplace misfortunes of Renzo Tramaglino and 
Lucia Mondella. 

That insipid, passionless peasant girl; that cowardly 


OTHERS : 65, 


“half-witted priest; that friar who always has a sermon 
or a benediction under his frock; that Nameless Knight 
‘who tears around making a terrible noise only to col- 
lapse at the whimpering of a bigoted female and get 
down on his knees before the oratory of a canny saint 
—all bored me and angered me. I did not sense the 
pure and truly great art that beautifies many pages 
of that too famous novel; and, on the other hand, the 
atmosphere of Christian forbearance that pervades it, 
its servile acquiescence in the whims of a Lord God, 
its summary and exemplary punishment of sinners 
coupled with a very moderate rewarding of the good 
and the unfortunate, roused all the wrath in my Satanic 
-and Carduccian soul. 

Up on one of the hilltops in “my country’—under 
another of those February skies, but this time fair and 
cloudless—I read my “slam” at Manzoni; and on 
those two boys—who later on became very estimable 
and esteemed servants of the State—I made a very bad 
impression. ‘They were horrified. What? Was the 
youngest of the “Trinity” to be allowed to insult, ridi- 
cule, belittle, one of the masterpieces of Italian genius? 
Audacity, courage, open-mindedness—very well! but 
in their proper places and within proper limits! This 
was going too oe The discussion that followed was 
more acrimonious and heated than usual. After that I 
frequently saw my two censors and remained on speak- 
ing terms with them; but “The Trinity” was not men- 
tioned again at that time, nor has it been since. 

Not long after, fortunately, I met a man—consider- 


66 THE FAILURE 


ably older than I—who was the direct opposite of those 
first two. He was a poet (he wrote poetry, that is, 
in both verse and prose); a musician (he played the 
flute); a hearty, enthusiastic, cordial, impulsive fellow 
—with all the qualities which I desired and required 
in a companion. He knew and liked my favorite 
authors—Poe, Walt Whitman. He was the first to 
tell me of Baudelaire. He gave me most marvelous 
new books to read: Flaubert, Dostoievski, Anatole 
France. 

He lived two lives: during the day he was manager 
or something in a business office; at night and on Sun- 
days he was an ardent, crazy dreamer. He wrote a 
great deal and had found a way to get several of his 
things published in the papers. He introduced me to 
friends of his, artists, or people who wanted to be 
artists. Among them was a young and delightfully 
sensitive poet, rich of imagery, with a languor born of 
all the melancholies, a Heinean and a D’Annunzian in 
one, a voracious reader of many literatures and, a ‘n 
all, a writer to the manner born. He was as tal’ ad 
slender as a lily stem, pale-as a mystic novice, chaste 
and fragile as a girl—not long after that he died of 
consumption. 

With them, too, I met a mysterious funereal painter 
enamored of Bocklin; a half crazy violinist who im- 
provised (on the piano) wild triumphal marches; a bud- 
ding composer, on the perpetual lookout for librettos, 
singing lessons, and other men’s wives. 

These were not, as I later realized, men from whom 


OTHERS 67 


I could expect to gain much, or who would ever rise to 
great heights of achievement. Yet they gave me, after 
my freeze-up in books, my first contact with the warm 
nd palpitating world of art. That little make-believe, 
small-town Bohemia had representatives from every | 
sphere of mental activity. In them I saw men reel 
were doing things, creating, men who would one day 
attain glory—and not stiff and wan corpses of pompous 
celebrities who had long since been laid in their tombs. 
In my eyes those unknown, yearning, zealous youths, 
intoxicated with their dreams and tormented by their 
doubts, would be the geniuses of to-morrow, the con- 
querors of eternity, the joyous creators of new beau- 
ties. I wanted to be one of them, to feel myself a 
brother, a comrade of theirs in this submerged, subter- 
Tanean pursuit of success and of beauty. 

Every Sunday and every holiday we met at the house , 
of the oldest among us; we drank coffee; we smoked | 
cigarettes (my first! ); we spoke with unrestrained sin-, 
cerity of a new book, of a newly discovered author, | 
of an article, of an opera; we argued, we quarreled, 
we shouted. Or else, amid frequent outbursts of en- 
thusiasm, the poets among us read their poems written 
during the week; or the man who played the flute 
would do a pastoral—exquisite in its monotonous ten- 
derness; or a pianist would execute a fugue of Bach 
or one of his own compositions. 

The firm conviction was implanted in every one of 
us that we were each destined to glory and greatness. 
We admired each other without envy or rivalry. We 


68 THE FAILURE 


courted deception as to our real merits and asked noth- 
ing better than to be humored in our dreams. One of 
the most hackneyed phrases among us was: “A fellow 
must drink deep of the Chimera’s cup!” Just what 
kind of liquor that famous Chimera brewed I never 
knew, though we consumed an extraordinary amount 
of it every Sunday. 

In this group of brethren five I had my small place 
too: I was critic, scholar, philosopher. They turned 
to me when they wanted some historical fact, the title 
of a book, information on some fashionable scientific 
theory of the day. 

They considered my knowledge unlimited, though 
its only legitimate claim to such distinction lay in its 
contrast to their ignorance. The name I thus ac- 
quired, and my as yet not wholly conquered taciturnity, 
inspired a greater fear and respect for my authority 
than safety required, while I in turn was so over- 
whelmed by their esteem for me that I never ventured 
to read them any of the things that I was continuously 
writing on the intricate problems of life and death. 

Although I felt at my ease in these periodic hurly- 
burlies of intellect and poetry, I still sensed that these 
new friends did not wholly satisfy me, and that my 
spirit, my mind, already accustomed to abstractions and 
inclined to systematic thinking, really wanted some- 
thing else and something more. True, I found pleasure 
in the warmth of that light and somewhat vulgar en- 
thusiasm. Under the influence of all that poetry my 
sensibilities had gained in breadth and fineness. Music, 


OTHERS 69 


which I had there been enabled to enjoy for the first 
time in my life, furnished a more stately rhythm for 
tiny visionary gallopings. 

But I could not find in any of my new friends a 
love for naked thought, the habit of reasoning, nor any 
taste or aptitude for logical fencing. After two years 
I betrayed them, little by little, for new companions, 
for new cerebral orgies. 

They were three, these new ones: a student of medi- 
‘cine (blond and handsome), who preferred Shelley 
and Musset to textbooks on psychiatry, and the Uffizi 
Gallery to the dissecting room; a quasi-doctor of letters, 
a dwarf and a great talker, an indefatigable noser about 
bookshops, a poet incognito, at times a braggart and 
bluff, but, at bottom, a good fellow; and a “rough- 
neck,” younger than the rest of us, lacking system in 
everything, schooled in no school, a student of no sub- 
ject, a sworn enemy of all discipline, deficient in self- 
confidence (but very proud), a cynic and a pessimist. 
I felt at once that this latter youngster had more stuff 
in him, more real substance, than either of the other 
two, and I attached myself more particularly to him 
from the very first. The first day we met I picked an 
argument with him, but thereafter we joined forces , 
against the others. In our daily meetings they stood | 
for poetry, literature, elegance, snobisme, in a word, 
for that D’Annunzian spirit which was beginning about 
that time to swell the heads and rot the brains of the 
prematurely senile youth of Italy. We two, on the 
Contrary, stood for facts, for definite documented 


70 THE FAILURE 


knowledge, for ideas, for simple and symmetrical 


# 


theory, for hard and rigid philosophy. For many 


months the four of us were able to hold together and 
argue without too much bitterness. Our common sym- 
pathies and, above all, the hatreds which we shared, 
constituted a close bond between us. But soon the 
pricks and the blows began to hurt: irony quickly 
changed into sarcasm, innuendo to insult. The ties 
that bound us were mysteriously weakened; we met 
a few times in an atmosphere of tragic suspicion. 
Finally we all agreed to a complete and everlasting 
separation—two in this direction, two in that. I can 
still see the street-corner (I even remember the hour 
of the day) where the irrevocable divorce was con- 
summated. We parted without so much as a hand 
clasp or a good-by; and when night fell, I found my- 
self with a single friend, my only life-long friend, a 
friend whom I shared with none. 


Chapter 10: He!’ 


Dear Giuliano! More than twelve years have passed 
since that muggy rainy autumn in which our lost souls 
‘met and found each other. Now we can speak of those 
‘days calmly, serenely, as if they were lived by two 
entirely different people—though we still bear the 
names they bore and have so many memories in com- 
‘mon with them. 

We are not, in fact, the same people. I am not I. 
‘You are not you. A time came when we each went 
our ways. You are now a grown man, sane, solid, 
industrious, esteemed; you have admirers, followers, 
perhaps even disciples. You have fought your battles 
‘and you can show your scars; you have created some- 
thing out of nothing; something that stands up, that 
passes, that even pays. Under the overalls of a laborer, 
behind the spectacles of an accountant, you have tried 
to conceal the pain and torment of your deep, rich, com- 
plex soul. 

I am still the star-gazing wanderer I was in those 
days, roaming the universe, rudderless, and without a 
course. I have, as we Italians say, “neither art nor 
part”—I belong neither here nor there. Not a stone 
have I whereon to lay my head—the stone of one defi- 
nite, reliable resource, I mean. There is no corner 


1 Giuseppe Prezzolini.—Translator’s note 
71 


72 THE FAILURE 


of the earth I can put a fence around and say: “This 
is mine!” However, I too have changed—and how 
greatly, how greatly changed! 

So we can talk of those years with apparent calm 
at least, as though it were a matter of history—history 
of other people. Talk of it, nevertheless, I must; 
for our friendship was not like other friendships,— 
frivolous, sentimental, a passing acquaintance. You 
must agree with me, Giuliano; our ‘friendship was not 
like other friendships. 

I wonder whether you ever realized—realized 
deeply, in its true significance—what an impressive, 
what a beautiful thing our long comradeship was? 
For my part I cannot think of those years of my life 
without seeing your image rise before me—you, a 
studious and excitable Jacobin! And I see myself 
too, and always at your side; now battling, with low- 
ered head, against the sleet storms of winter or against 
the dust storms of summer; now leaning on the para- 
pets along the Arno watching the fishermen so indus- 
triously wasting their time; now lying on my back on 
the grassy summit of the Mugello; now bending over 
the pushcart of a bookseller in search of some treasure 
second-hand; now seated in silence at a bare table in 
some country tavern. No matter how hard I try, 
Giuliano, I can never see myself alone. I can remem- 
ber our long comradeship, day by day, hour by hour; 
but apart from it, nothing! 

Do you remember? Do you remember jee you 
first lived—the house in that spotless, deserted street, 


HE! 73 


tucked away between great residences and gardens so 
forbiddingly closed, a street where no one ever passed, 
‘after dark, except lovers and janitors? (A large house 
with a yellowish tinge not more than fifty years old at 
the most, but already with a mellow air of age and 
sadness!) Do you remember the big dark room you 
had—filled with books, the treasure trove of countless 
-gems of French and Italian literature, the promised 
land of my ignorant but insatiable curiosity? Do you 
remember our long chats in that room while the dry 
logs in the fireplace crackled cosily—evening falling 
rapidly outside, and church bells madly tolling anime 
—souls of long forgotten Dead? Do you remember? 
Do you remember the arid little garden that lay buried 
between damp walls and closed windows, where for the 
first time we talked of Stirner and the divine freedom 
of the Ego? Or do you remember, rather, our climbs 
up the hills to see the sunsets, looking down on the 
city squatted in its sodden cowardliness on the banks 
of the lazy stream, and saying to ourselves: ‘That 
place will be ours some day!”’? 

At times we went further on, up into the mountains, 
in quest of solitude, of sharp air, of a sterner Nature. 
The roads never seemed long. We walked on and on 
with light impatient strides, brightening the journey 
not with song, but with arguments, thoughts, witti- 
cisms. A long hill to climb roused us like a battle to 
be won; while the down grades brought us silence 
and humiliation. Soon the city walls were far behind 
us; soon also the barbed wire fences and the fields— 


74 THE FAILURE 


ruled with straight furrows like the pages of a copy 
book at school. We wanted highlands, we did! We 
wanted altitude! Altitude and freedom! Not roads 
lined with their everlasting hedges, but foot-paths, 
mule-paths, trails that clipped the curves in the climb- 
ing highways. We followed the clearings of the wood 
lots. We took to the stony slides that led straight 
up to abandoned cabins! And up at the summit there 
we halted—under the walls, perhaps, of some wretched 
convent (all its doors and windows closed) or near 
piles of stones that once had been a castle; and we 
sang the “‘Marseillaise” in the crisp February air, our 
only audience the empty, disconsolate valleys, the far- 
away mountains, their slopes black as poverty, their 
peaks radiant with snow and sunlight under a sky 
roughened with cloud; and our chests expanded with 
each panting breath and the violent beating of. our 
hearts. How far away we were from all the noise 
and stuffiness of the city, from all its holy laws of 
daily humiliation! We felt that we were alone in the 
world, masters of all about us, the only worthy and 
noble men alive! The wind blew, splashing into our 
faces the few drops of water still clinging to the 
shriveled oak leaves. Stiff white clouds journeyed past 
us across the vast colorless sky. ‘Trees groaned, pro- 
tested, as the ruthless norther beat against them; under 
our feet the brown frost-bitten grass lay patiently wait- 
ing for springtime and the fragrant secret of the first 
violets! 

Dear Giuliano; to-day we are two men, and not two 


HE! Y bes 


_ boys. We have wives and children—responsibilities 
not a few. We, in a certain sense, have souls in our 
‘keeping. And yet, I do believe, if anything not wholly 
insincere ever came from our hearts, if, after death, 
something of us is to endure in the lives of others, we 
shall owe it—as we owed it then—to those chill winter 
Sundays, to those flights we used to take out toward 
the naked earth, up toward the pure heights! 

Do you remember the evenings when I used to come 
to your house—your other house—where you would be 
writing all by yourself, waiting for me? Directly in 
_ front of your windows stood a cypress tree, and beyond 
the cypress a path leading up a hillside. We loved that 
cypress—a tousled, unkempt tree, dusty with the dust 
of the city, but black and solitary on that ancient 
_ garden mound. And we often looked at the path that 
went upward beyond it! Our lives were paths that 
went upward, too—resolved ever to go upward! All 
our dreams we dreamed in high places—our feet in the 
moist grass, and the fragrance of bloom in the air! All 
our plans for books, all our literary manifestoes, all our 
“programs of action,” we first thought of and evolved 
up there, a thousand feet or more above the level of 
the sea—and farther still above the level of mankind! 
And in every one of my plans you had your share, as 
I had mine in everything of yours. We divided the 
universe sharply into two parts: you and I on the one 
side, and all the rest on the other. 

Up there, toward the end of Via Leonardo, there 
were two thick and majestic cypresses of almost equal 


pe) THE FAILURE 


height. ‘They stood side by side, and alone, apart 
from all other trees. We said, on one occasion—do 
you remember?—that those two trees were we two; and 
that just as their roots twined and intertwined beneath 
the earth and their branches twined and intertwined 
above the earth, so we should be united in life and in 
immortality. We even said that their fate would be 
our fate: that if one of them were cut down or struck 
by lightning, so one of us would come to an end. But 
the two cypress trees are still standing there; no storm 
has wrecked them; no ax has been put to their roots; 
the sparrows still sit in the branches at nightfall, twit- 
tering their loves. And we two are still alive and still 
near each other—but mad conceits are no longer 
buzzing in our brains; and whenever I chance to pass 
those two black brothers, I lower my head and—I don’t 
know why—lI feel a clutch of anguish at my heart! 

Don’t you realize what a tremendous thing, what a 
beautiful thing, our friendship of those days was? I 
don’t know whether I still live in your memory as 
you live in mine; I don’t know how far you are con- 
scious that all that was best in us began in those days 
—and not before; that it was during those very years 
that our souls, our characters, our personalities, took 
on their permanent outlines and measured the full 
stretch of their wings. 

We are near each other still; and yet so far, far 
apart! I know nothing of you and you know nothing 
of me. But as I picture you seated at the big 
scrawled and spotted tables of the library—afternoons, 


HE! a 

_ during the days of our passionate research—bending 
over open books, over the paper unfolded in front of 
"you—or hear your voice asking or answering a ques- 
tion (both of us looking around out of the corners of 
our eyes to be sure the gruff and relentless beadle 
would not catch us whispering! )—I understand every- 
thing: you become mine again, all mine again, even as 

- you were in those far-off days of our impatient toiling. 
Then there were the nights—late—when we went to 
the café, to a table hidden away in the farthest corner 
under the great iron and glass canopy of the drinking- 
_room. Do you remember how silently and disdainfully 
we worked our way—our black coats drawn tight about 
us—through the tables, where families of ‘fat bour- 
geois” were seated, or solitary well-fed philistines dy- 
ing of boredom, hypnotized by the empty glasses in 
front of them and the chatter of fashionable boys of 
the town, rich, but so “common”? What a delight for 
us to steal into our corner away off there, to sip our 
hot—and wretched—coffee, reviewing the day’s ac- 
quisitions, discussing the present and the future, mak- 
ing remarks about the half-witted stare of the man 
at the next table, cataloguing the fortunes of the 
world, the plagues of the earth, and the hopes of 
Heaven! How many books we tore to pieces there; 
how many truths we discovered (rediscovered); how 
many reputations we ground to powder; how many 
systems we sent to the junk yard; how many prefaces 
and indices we wrote; how many smart phrases we 
aired; how many shafts of wit we barbed! Absinthe, 


oop THE FAILURE 


champagne—for us? Ours was the intoxication of di- 
vine youth, a drunkenness without wine, an orgy with- 
out women, a carnival without music and dancing! 
Ours was the daily exultant uncovering of our Selves, 
of our real and innermost Selves: the discovery and 
continuous remodeling of our minds—minds of poet- 
thinkers, sounding the depths of the universe! 

We discovered our Selves; and we _ discovered 
Thought, at the same time and together. I revealed 
your soul to you, and you revealed my soul to me. 
We believed everything, we denied everything, to- 
gether. Together we built up. Together we tore 
down. Side by side, with hands clasped, we sought 
Truth, devoured books, searched, questioned, throwing 
the best established, the most undisputed, glories into 
the crucible of criticism! At the self-same instant we 
deserted the faith of our fathers, the idols of our tribe, 
tearing off the muzzles of the timorous. We slept in 
the same bed. We ate at the same table. We marked 
the same passages in the same books. And yet, there 
was nothing soft or effeminate about our friendship, 
nothing familiar, nothing sentimental, nothing—yes, 
even this I will say—nothing from the heart. It was 
the friendship of two tormented brains, not the affec- 
tionate communion of two confiding souls. We never 
wept together—not even once. ‘ We never betrayed 
the intimate secrets. of our love affairs. When you 
became engaged I heard of it from other people; and 
I got my first announcement of your marriage from the 
Corriere della Sera. Ah, to good purpose, in those 


HE! 79 


days, ge were reading Le Rouge et le Noir and La 
_ Mort du Loup! 

_ Yes, you must agree, Giuliano, our friendship was 
not like other friendships. It was altogether mental, 
philosophical, intellectual—from the brain—though it 
had all the warmth and all the trials of true affections 

_ of the heart. Indeed I am not quite sure that the 
heart did not enter into it to some extent. I am not 
wholly brain. Don’t you too feel a certain homesick- 
ness in these recollections, a melancholy yearning for 
a happiness gone forever? Why do these memories of 
mere walks and mere talks and mere readings—memo- 
ries of a simple uneventful past of labor and of silence 
—move me more than the memories of my lost loves? 
Why do [ still feel for you a tenderness which I never 
voiced and never hinted, which I never showed in my 
actions nor expressed in my letters? No, I am not 
at all sure that our hearts did not have their share in 
our friendship. 

You alone could perhaps tell me—but I will not ask 
you to. I must not let you tell me. That must remain 
another of those secrets, the last indeed of the secrets, 
that made our manly comradeship so pure and so 
wholesome! 


Chapter 11: I Discover Unity 


Up to that time thinking had served me as a witness 
and a corroborator of my ill-being, my sadness, my 
naive disgust with life, as a crutch, as a buttress, as 
shoring—nothing more! In a loud voice I called upon 
philosophy to explain and justify a judgment precon- 
ceived; and I praised this my servant, friend, and 
abetter so long as it proved me right, so long as it 
lent me authority (at the time I thought it a venerable 
authority) to clothe, in the face of my antagonists, 
the poetic nudity of my childish and imaginary woes. 
My choice of the plain and somber cloak of philosophy 
rather than—like another Shakespeare—the frilled and 
flourished mantle of poetry proves, I believe, that I 
had an instinctive leaning toward abstract thought, and 
an intuitive recognition that that particular cloak had 
an intrinsic value, a value superior to that of other 
cloaks, and that I was already on the way to discover- 
ing that under the make-up a living substantial body 
might eventually be found. 

In fact it was through thinking that I escaped from 
my despondency. Method made me lose sight of re- 
sults. Means came to obliterate ends. As I have 
already stated, I was determined irrefutably to prove 


the essential evil of life—in such a way that it could 
80 


Y DISCOVER UNITY ~~ SE 


_be denied by no one, that everybody would have to 
admit: “Yes, that is so! It cannot be otherwise!” 

It seemed to me that only science could offer cer- 
tainty; and so, since it was philosophy I wanted, it 
had to be a philosophy deeply grounded on the sciences 
and born of them. Such a philosophy I found—a 
philosophy that everybody knows. In our day, in 

Italy, it goes under the name of Positivism. 
I set out, accordingly, to make a “positivistic” 
demonstration of Pessimism. With all the hunger 
of my eighteen years, I threw myself upon anthro- 
pologies, psychologies, biologies, and sociologies— 
‘sciences which in those times had reached the un- 
tenable meridian altitude which already presages de- 
cline. I accumulated facts. I copied statistics. I ap- 
_ plied theories. I attempted generalizations; and—ape- 
like—I improvised hypotheses and systems of my own. 
Bit by bit I began to enjoy the game; I forgot the trag- 
edy of the world, Leopardi’s “vanity,’’ Schopenhauer’s 
“renunciation,” and my own boundless discontent. I 
loved research for its own sake. I loved the idea that 
generates a greater idea—the marvelously widening 
comprehensiveness of the abstraction. Method and 
generalization came to possess me; I no longer saw my 
unhappiness reflected in the world, but began to feel 
the world thinking in me. From that time on my life 
was thought and thought only. Ideas—‘“‘the idea”— 
seemed to me the only reality, and philosophy the only 
perfect expression. 
I was smothered in facts, but facts were not enough 


82 THE FAILURE 


for me. No matter how deeply I fathomed them, no 
matter how many of them I got together, I could 
never exhaust the Infinite. That wealth of the particu- 
lar which had been my sole wealth during the days of 
my disordered erudition seemed woefully meager to 
me now. My mind eager for vastness and complete- 
ness now hungered for universal concepts as the only 
food able to appease its appetites. Theories excited 
me more than proofs, ideas more than experiments, and 
two puny facts seemed to me more than enough to 
base a system on. Forging ahead in the effort to crowd 
more and more reality into fewer and fewer principles, 
I brought up, as was natural and necessary, in Mon- 
ism—not, of course, the idealistic Monism which I 
later came to know, but a Monism such as the great 
mechanists I was then hobnobbing with were likely 
to inspire. I believed—believed, notice—that all the 
entities of the universe were reducible to a single sub- 
stance, which, though unlimited, more closely resem- 
bled old-fashioned ‘‘matter” than anything else. 

To me this Monism, this faith in the profound and 
substantial unity of all things, was not a mere word, 
a mere phrase, a mere formula. I felt it and I lived it 
within myself in every moment of my life, the way 
one lives a great passion or a great love. All things, 
no matter how diversified, became in reality one thing 
to me; and this ultimate substance, the substratum of 
the changing whole, was not an intellectual concept, 
but reality itself. I got no end of ecstasy from the 


EE —E—— 


I DISCOVER UNITY 83 


conviction that I knew, knew, that all the objects about 


_ me, objects so vastly differentiated and unrelated in 


the judgment of the ordinary fools I met every day, 


were to me, on the contrary, one and the same object, 
referable to one and the same principle, made of one 
and the same stuff, shaped and colored in a thousand 


_ ways for the convenience of our senses. 


My faith was so great that I turned apostle. I was 


beginning at that time to overstep the circles of my 
schoolmates, frequent the society of older intellects 
_ (which were, or seemed to be, superior to mine), or of 
_ people not so well read as I, but interested in new 
_ ideas, and on whom I could venture my first experi- 


ments as a missionary. I shall never forget a certain 


_ day (what music! what sunshine!) in the month of 
June. I was calling on a young novelist (still unpub- 


lished) whom I was trying to convert to my belief. All 
of a sudden the bells began to ring for noon-time, and 
for a moment the air, already filled with sunshine, 
seemed to overflow with warmth and sound. 

“Just think!” I said to my friend, pointing to a pen. 
“Just think! This pen here, and the sound from those 
bells, are one and the same thing. Here you have an 
energy that is shut up, imprisoned, for the time being, 
in wood and steel. There you have the same energy 
running free, expanding in ever-widening circles across 
the blue sky. Where can you find me a more magnifi- 
cent and profound truth than that?” 

At the moment my whole soul with its five senses was 


84 THE FAILURE 


conscious of that divine Unity. I was acutely, vividly, 
physically aware of a great whirling of inimical diversi- 
ties roaring back toward the single fountain head from 
which they came, and where eventually they would re- 
unite in the unity of a pantheistic Nirvana. 


DP 


Chapter 12: I Am the World — 


But I did not stop even at Monism. My mind was, 
as it still is, a vagabond easily distracted from one 
thing to another. And then thought never stops 
either. The end of the last page is only the beginning 
of another chapter, and every peak attained is but the 
spring-board for a new leap. 

No sooner had I made the principle of Unity mine 
than I was confronted with the question that eternally 
recurs in human thought: Of what does this Unity con- 
sist? Matter? Ether? Energy? Spirit? 

I relived, within myself and along its broad lines, 
of course, the whole drama of philosophy. The affirma- 
tions of the early naturalists were met by the obvious 
rationalistic objections. The universe of water or fire, 
of corpuscles or vortices, gradually became the world of 
reason, the multiple incarnation of ideas, the crystalli- 
zation of the Divine Logos, the changing stream of 
images, the kingdom of the Spirit Manifest. The ideal- 
istic solution won me over. Esse est percipi! Im- 
mediate reality is sensation. Sensation is an affair of — 
ours, of the human mind. Beyond sensation we know 
nothing. Sole witness, sole detector, of reality is the 
fact of continual occurrence and recurrence of states 
of mind, of happenings in consciousness. The world is 


a creation of our own minds, our own “representation.” 
85 


86 THE FAILURE 


My philosopher was no longer Schopenhauer, but 
Berkeley. 

Is there something beyond this reprasendanin? \Is 
knowledge a trustworthy window opening on the Real, 
or is it merely a fabric of ground or painted glass—a 
translucent crystal affording only false and uncertain 
shadows of the truth? Is there really something be- 
hind knowledge, or is there nothing (as there is nothing 
behind life)? Is knowledge, perchance, merely the 
mirror of itself—bark without tree trunk, drapery 
drawn across a void? 

These questions, which a sane man does not ask 
himself, which the professional philosopher smothers 
by burying them in long words, troubled me to the 
depths of my being, forcing my brain to ceaseless antics 
in a mad hunt for arguments, sophisms, subterfuges, 
keeping me in a state of feverish anxiety and strain as 
though my very life depended on my finding answers 
to them. Now, with the passing of the years, I can 
see how ingenuous my method of stating the problems 
was and how crude my solutions of them; but in those 
days they were matters of grave concern, inner experi- 
ences far more important than a first love or an un- 
expected windfall of money. Thinking was my whole 
life and the selection of a theory determined the char- 
acter and outlook of my whole existence. 

Every evening, from four to seven and from eight 
to twelve, there were discussions—discussions with 
friends, discussions with enemies, discussions in loud 
voices in utter earnestness and fury. There we were— 


I AM THE WORLD ween = 


walking downyalong the banks of the yellow river or up 
along the higher boulevards, jostling our way through 
crowds of people in town or loitering in and out among 
the trees in*the country; on slippery paving stones of 
the city, on the white macadam of country roads; under 
soft hazy skies of early evening; under skies of night 
dripping with rain, or shivering with sparkling stars; 
groping along through foggy streets, avoiding the traf- 
fic; seeing nothing, hearing nothing, unconscious of 
the outside world whose existence we denied or af- 
firmed at least once every half hour. Theory of knowl- 
edge; perception and representation; objectivity and 
subjectivity; idealism and realism; Kant and John 
Stuart Mill; sense and reason; Plato and Locke—the 
whole arsenal of epistemology was wielded in the fray! 
We would return home hoarse in our throats, deaf in 
our ears, our heads muddled, bewildered, dazed, won- 
dering all the time whether this confusion of definitions, 
arguments, inductions, might not be, after all, the 
product of a stupid misunderstanding, a simple, ordi- 
nary matter of words. 

But my idealism held its ground. It seemed to me 
‘the only logical premise—and, being logical, it did not 
Stop, in my case, with the usual identification of the 
external and the internal. The world is representation 
—granted! But I know nothing of any representa- 
tions outside my own. The representations of others 
are as unknown to me as the essences of inanimate 
things. The minds of other people exist only as hy- 
pothesess:of my mind. The world is therefore a crea- 


1 THE FAILURE 


tion of mine—the world is my soul—the world is—ME. 

What a marvelous discovery! What a sudden and 
unexpected burst of light! No idea ever stirred me 
and transformed me as this one did. I paid no atten- 
tion to its wild conflict with common sense; I did not 
realize that it might be a dialectic equivocation, a 
juggling of words, and nothing more. The very ab- 
surdity of. it enkindled the ardor of my faith. No 
one believes it? No one can believe it? So much the 
better! J believe it. The profoundest truth is always 
the last to be discovered! 

And I believed it with all my brain; I took it seri- 
ously, literally, elbowing its remotest and most obscure 
consequences aside. My life became something fan- 
tastic, something divine, though nothing in the world 
about me had changed at all. 

The whole universe was only a part of my Self; its 
very being depended on me, on my senses, on my mind. 
Things appeared and disappeared according to my 
movements to and fro. If I came back, they re- 
appeared; if I left them again, again they vanished. 
If I closed my eyes all colors died; if I stopped my 
ears, no sound, no discord, no harmony broke the 
silence of space. And the ultimate corollary: When I 
die, the world dies with me! But a last doubt was 
left: Shall I die as others die? Is it possible that 
my mind will ever cease to think? 

And men! Passing shadows that move across the 
curtaimof my senses, phantoms evoked by my will, pre- 
tentious puppets dancing on the stage of my mind’s 


I AM THE WORLD 89 


theater! What a joke on them! How much more in- 
significant and ridiculous they now seemed to me, with 
ail their contortions, than they had ever seemed be- 
fore! As I passed through a crowd of people I would 
think: “See these idiots here! They fancy they are 
living beings, living on their own account and, perhaps 
even—credulous fools!—immortal! They don’t in the 
least suspect that they are just pictures hastily flitting 
across the retina of my eye; just memories or expecta- 
tions of my mind; insubstantial drops in a river of im- 
ages which rises and empties wholly within my spirit. 
Not only this: here they are buried in Non-Being up 
to their necks! Yet just see them strutting around as 
though a full life awaited them, a life without end!” 
And looking at them thus, I smiled and hated them 
no longer. All the bitterness their former unjust con- 
tempt had caused me now vanished from my heart. I 
was no longer a victim; I had become master and 
despot. I was the only living soul in a concourse of 
shadows. 
In those days I must have felt somewhat as God 
would feel if He really existed. I was a tireless Creator 
and Annihilator. The world lay at my feet; I had 
only to lift my hand completely to remodel or, more 
exactly, to reabsorb it. There were moments when this 
thought filled me with such transcending exaltation that » 
I forgot I was the little Self I had known and endured 
so long. Of a sudden I had been transfigured, giganti- 
fied, like an imperious god, stepping forth triumphant 
from the husk of a paltry man. 


Chapter 13: Nothing Is True—Touwt Est 


Permus 


THE perfect and logically unassailable absurdity was 
the maddest form of inebriacy I practised in my early 
youth, though it had no hang-over to speak of, as is 
the case with all honest inebriacy. 

However, the morning after was, for me, a sad one. 
Accustomed, finally, to thinking of myself as the axis 
of the universe, as the only unity capable of giving 
shape and stability to Non-Being aspiring to Being, I 
suddenly awoke to the fact that I had been, all along, 
the dupe of a play on words, the victim caught in a 
trap of logic, the nut in a metaphysical nut-cracker. 
All those thrills, all that excitement, all that wonder, 
over a false deduction in a vicious circle! To say 
that the world is representation is to say, simply, that 
representations make up the world—that the world 
exists. To believe in the existence of other people 
means nothing more than that certain complexes of 
sensation—governed by wills similar to ours—exist and 
are called men. We have simply formulated a few 
definitions that make no difference to anybody anyhow. 
We can go on using the same vocabulary as before. 
We must go on acting as we acted before. My will is 
still obstructed by physical bodies. Not only that: my 

90 


~~ 


NOTHING IS TRUE—TOUT EST PERMIS 91 


will is still obstructed by other wills! } Which proves 
that instead of being a god, I am simply a fool. 
Later on this conviction prompted me to seek an- 
other road to divinity—by lengthening and broad- 
ening the reach of my will. Then, however, the 
disappointment and humiliation of my awakening was 
so great that I threw myself over to the opposite ex- 
treme. I lost all faith in thought, in reason, in philoso- 
phy. Thought became paradox in the service of 
poetry; reason a geometrical symmetrical design of 
pure line without dimension; philosophy a dialectic 
expression of the likes and dislikes, of the mental and 
moral needs, of this and that individual man—not of 
the universal Spirit Incarnate. Logic, which, with its 
free autonomous severity, its unswerving restless pace, 
had been my guide hitherto, now turned into a weapon 
of subtle, captious, disintegrating sophistry, which I 
applied with spiteful zest to all possible thoughts wher- 
ever the opportunity presented itself. I became a sort 
of Gorgias of the Florentine cafés—Gorgias, who, to 
solace himself for his own loss of nerve, for his own 
broken pride, amused himself by blasting, withering, 
the self-assurance of other people, demolishing the 
theories and systems they set up, refuting every posi- 
tive statement they made, taking advantage, in so do- 
ing, not only of their weaknesses or their ignorance, but 
also of his own bad faith, unfairness and obstinacy. I 
delighted now in filling the heads of dogmatists with 
doubts, in silencing enthusiasts, in ridiculing fanatics, 
in humiliating glib talkers. It was a bitter, malicious, 


92 ~ THE FAILURE 


futile form of amusement, but it gave me pleasure. It 
was the only vengeance within my reach. Deliberately 
now I sought out people, not to convince them, as I 
had formerly done, but to unsettle them, bewilder them, 
make them again like myself. 

Very few could hold their ground. A vigorous man- 
ner of talking, a gift for speaking offhand, my prac- 
tice in argument and debate, my ready wit, my knowl- 
edge of various philosophies, and a brazen fondness for 
showing my erudition quickly gave me as a rule the 
windward position. I had mastered method: I had 
every manceuver, every trap, every thrust, at my in- 
stant disposal. 

Everything is relative. Error here is truth there. 
Truth here is error there. Every principle contradicts 
itself. All systems of metaphysics are but restate- 
ments in different language of two or three general for- 
mulas inevitably reducible to some mystic Unity—a 
unit which cannot be comprehended, which is nothing, 
and means nothing. Philosophies are made to justify 
our prejudices, to humor our sentiments, to serve the 
requirements (even the base requirements) of our prac- 
tical lives. Translate philosophy into terms of life, 
and we get something closely resembling Carlyle’s out- 
line of the metaphysics hogs would have if they took 
up philosophy. The only reality is the Now—sensa- 
tion: let every one live in his own Now, and let for- 
mulas and faiths go hang. People should shed the 
scabs of their old diseases, set themselves free, believe 
in themselves and in the passing moment, which is a 


oe 
j 
a 


" 


_ NOTHING IS TRUE—TOUT EST PERMIS 93 


beautiful moment precisely because it is a passing one. 
_, And as I have never stopped halfway in any of my, 
adventures, it did not take me long to deduce the ulti- 
“mate consequences of this negation of every principle 
and every rule. I came across Max Stirner at that 
time and it seemed to me that I had at last found the © 
only master I could not do without. From the intellec- , 
tual absurdity I passed on to the moral absurdity. 
There was no other god before me, no other god out- 
side of me. I worked up a sort of Egology—purging 
my soul of family affection, wrenching loose from all 
ties that bound me to country, from all restraints of 
respectability and good manners. I was an anarchist. 
I proclaimed myself an anarchist. I saw no other 
purpose worthy of attainment than a complete eman- 
cipation of myself—and of others. (For, of course, to 
demand freedom myself I had to concede it to others.) 

With three friends of mine I founded a society of 
individualists; I wrote a ‘‘Manifesto of Free Spirits” — 
and we were off on a roaring tear—wine, hashish, and 
ferocious nonsense. 

Nothing was sacred in my eyes any longer: even 
revolutionary agitation and humanitarian reform which ~ 
at first had seemed to me such grand things now sud- 
denly appeared as childish dreams of ignorant and in- 
experienced fanatics. It took more than that to satisfy 

‘me! I demanded an imner ideal, a radical liberation of 
all men, and of their souls as well as of their bodies— 
and possibly a stick of dynamite here and there to help 
hurry things along. With the few kindred spirits to 


erry 


~~ 
ie 


94 THE FAILURE 


whom I had broached the matter, I considered seizing 
the city by a surprise attack some night. I began 
preparing myself for a world revolution. I wanted to 
get away somewhere, travel in all the countries of the 
earth, rub elbows with people of all kinds and climes, 
to have my fill of fragrance in the Orient, lose myself 
for once in the fogs of the North. 

Meanwhile, unable to do one blessed thing, discon- 
tented, overwrought, hungry, yet blasé to everything, 
I vented my rage in irritating epigrams, in mordant 
cynical explosions in Nietzschean style. In utter con- 
tempt of Madame Philosophy and of Kant, her egre- 
gious Alfonso, I planned a “Critique of All Reasons’”— 
and a “Twilight of the Philosophers.” I felt a mission- 
ary’s call to free others as—I believed—I had freed 
myself: with naked and fearless theory! 

How was I to do this? Through a periodical, of 
course!—a publication combining enough science to 
clear the ground of rubbish, with more than enough of 
the freakish, the crude, the anti-idealistic, the exotic, 
that would be furnished by myself and my closer asso- 
Ciates. 


» 


Chapter 14: Fever Heat 


Every time a new generation makes its appearance on 
the stage of life, the world’s symphony strikes a new 
‘tempo. Dreams, aspirations, hopes, joys of discovery, 
plans of attack, drum-beats to battle, challenges, impu- 
dences—and a magazine! 

Every article has the tone and the ring of a procla- 
mation; every controversial shaft, launched or re- 
ceived, reads like the bulletins of a victorious general; 
every headline is a manifesto; every book-review a 
storming of the Bastille; every new volume a gospel; 
every conversation a conspiracy of Catalines or a coun- 
cil of sans-culottes. Even private letters have the 
galloping rhythm of apostolic exhortations. 

The man of twenty looks upon the veteran as his 
enemy; every established idea is suspect; every great 
man is brought to trial again. History begins to look 
like an interminable night broken by flashes of light- 
ning, a period of hushed, impatient expectancy, an eter- 
nal twilight of dawn, waiting for OUR coming to bring 
the sun. To the man of twenty even sunsets seem to 
show the delicate white spangles of lingering sunrises; 
funeral torches are joyous beacons promising new fes- 
tiveness; plaints of the tolling church bells are peals 
of joy announcing new births and summoning to new 
baptisms. A man’s twenties are the one period in his 

95 


96 THE FAILURE 


life when he can really swagger, when he has the manly 
foolhardiness to take every bull by the horns, when 
he can walk with the light and firm step of a con- 
queror, his hat over one ear, and a walnut cane in his 
nervous hand! 

To us of the new generation every colored rag is a 
battle standard; every squeak or grumble a mighty 
convulsion of revolt; every exploding fire-cracker the 
first shot of an Armageddon; every sprinkle of rain the 
beginning of asecond Deluge. With distended ears we 
listen to the murmuring of the wind and believe it the 
end of the world; the beating of the hoofs of a draught 
horse on the pavement makes us run to the window 
as though it were the black Bucephalus of the Anti- 
christ; and the rays of the setting sun make us almost 
see a hemisphere of flame stretching beyond the far- 
thest mountains, where life possibly is a rioting of 
giants, and the skies, instead of showing a Christian 
blue, are the color of a conflagration or of Hell itself! 

In the moments of our greatest intoxication we are 
joyously certain of being the first men in the world— 
the first in order of time—the real Adams: Adams who 
are to name all things, build all cities, found all king- 
doms, be the prophets of all new religions, conquer, 
fighting tooth and nail and body to body, the entire 
world here below. Alone, innocent, unsophisticated, 
pure, we feel we have the right to wipe out memories of 
the past and the power to reweave reality on new looms 
and in new patterns. 

The world seems to us badly put together; life lacks 


FEVER HEAT oa! 


harmony and greatness; thought makes on us the im- 
_pression of a gesture barely begun, of a punch checked 
in midair, of a black charcoal sketch that no one has 
yet filled in with color on the canvas. 

- There is much for us to do and much for us to do 
over again! “ Here we are—ready, waiting! Off with 
our jackets and hats! \Farewell to our big books with 
their penciled margins, that gave us a thirst for knowl- 
edge but did not show us the way to the spring! 

Here we are! Look at us! Strong fellows, eager 
for work, in our shirt sleeves, our hair blowing in the 
wind, picks and crowbars in hand, guns on our shoul- 
ders—masons and soldiers in one, like the Hebrews of 
Esdra. Oh, how the hammers ring! Oh, what a dust 
we are stirring up! Lime! Dirt! Rubbish! But 
... aha, there goes one old wall—see her fall! Boom! 
Bang! And a smoke hangs over us as on a good old- 
fashioned battlefield. And we sing and we shout back 
and forth as we destroy, and the shouts are shouts of 
war, and the songs songs of revolution! 

There’s no denying it: we are aflame with the mili- 
tary spirit. We would not don a regular’s uniform for 
all the books in the world! But war is oxygen to our 
lungs. Every combat is to us a holiday. We think of 
our every word as a shot fired point blank at our 
enemy’s heart. Every idea we have is a charge of TNT 
that never fails to dismantle a fortress! However, the 
regular army will have none of us! Our place is with 
the volunteers. Weare guerrillas, brigands, rioters, dis- 
turbers of the peace, knights-errant looking for adven- 


98 THE FAILURE 


tures of the sword as Casanova sought adventures of 
the skirt. Don Quixote is our patron, and only for his 
sake do we tolerate Sancho Panza; but we give vent 
to our feelings in a poisonous hatred of Sansone Car- 
rasco, father and model of all philistines who are the 
sworn enemies of madness and all that resembles it. 

We too are knights—gentlemen “of cloak and 
sword”—the sword for the shriveled hearts of the 
patres conscripti, the cloak for the shoulders of shiv- 
ering, shuddering Dulcineas! Plumes on our hats, 
hands on our hilts, lowering glances to left and right— 
we are tough customers, I can tell you! What are 
you people doing around here? Better move along if 
you don’t want to get stepped on! Cut your own 
throats before we cut them for you! Make way for 
men! For we must go forward! ‘The weight of the 
world rests on our shoulders. We must attend to our 
job! 

And, as we set about it, anything goes: a cuff here, 
a thrust there, just for practice! We too mistake wind- 
mills for giants! But we are not ashamed of the mis- 
take. Are windmills not quite as dangerous? ‘Try one 
yourself and you’ll see that its arms are not less hard 
than the arms of Briareus! 

Everything for nothing—everything or nothing! 
Have you a world you want discovered, a truth you 
want revealed, a tower or a wall to be torn down to 
the sound of our trumpets? 

We are a nuisance to everybody; we drag God down 
from His throne in Heaven; we unseat kings from their 


FEVER HEAT encom 


thrones on earth. Not even the dead can rest in peace 
under the flowers and the lies on their graves, nor can 
chesty bronze celebrities, strutting on their pedestals 
of stone, be so sure of themselves! 

We are bent on freeing ourselves of everything and 
of everybody. We insist on recovering a nudity of 
mind as nude as the nudity of the innocent Adam’s 
body. Off with our coats—coats of religion! Off with 
our vests—vests of philosophy! Off with our shirts 
of prejudice, our neckties of idealism, our shoes of 
logic, our underdrawers of morality! 

We must rub our skins clean, brush up our minds, 
disinfect our brains, take a cold plunge in running 
water, become children again, as innocent and natural 
as when we issued from our mothers’ wombs. The 
dead must cease commanding the living. Books must 
no longer be the guides of life. Reason and History 
must drop their capital letters, resign their power, no 
longer keep us tied to school benches, waiting, our 
mouths open, our heads back, to be stuffed with bread- 
crumbs chewed in advance by others. Reason must be 
‘our Reason! History begins to-day! Year One of 
OUR era! IJncipit vita nova! 

A new heaven and a new earth! Scenery painted 
for the play in hand! Palaces run up over-night! 
Long facades, blazing with light, with a thousand win- 
dows and a flag at each one! Shouting and cheering 
along the streets! We must climb the heights, live 


on the mountaintops, look down upon the cities at our. 


feet and be able to despise men at a distance! 


te ee. 


alte 


tte 


ww sy 


100 THE FAILURE 


Despise them and even hate and kill them! But 
at bottom love them! All we are doing is for them. 
We are talking just to dazzle and terrify them; for our 
real object is their deliverance: happiness for every- 
body! We are making war to improve them, we are 
shouting to arouse them, we are frightening them into 
a realization of their own needs. We have but one 
ambition at bottom: to be their masters, their leaders, 
their prophets—we would be happy to die, as Moses 
died, in sight of the vineyards of the Promised Land. 

And since we are young and eager (and immune 
to writer’s cramp), all these storms, all this revolting, 
all this boasting, results in four, eight, sixteen pages of 
printed paper—the weekly “journal of opinion”’! 


m come to send fire c on the earth.” 


cia ‘LUKE. 








Chapter 15: I Make a Speech at Night 


THE review—the famous review, uppermost thought in 
the mind of the man who would break his way into 
the herd of the millions to awaken and enlighten 
them; the long dreamed of and long promised review 
with which he would take the world by storm, blud- 
geoning the thick skulls of his contemporaries; the 
journal so often proposed and so often planned which 
would voice the aspirations of unknown geniuses, give 
name and fame to anonymous grandeurs, reveal to the 
masters of the present (to men no longer young, to men 
of thirty and forty) that the real youngsters, the new 
youngsters of twenty have also come of age and at last 
acquired the right to speak; the magazine, the abso- 
lutely indispensable “‘organ,” the sheet that fills a long- 
felt want, a first delicious stretch for the muscles of 
prisoners barely released from their chains, the first 
joyous song of throats that have only murmured hith- 
erto; the paper destined to be, intended to be, able 
to be, the avenger of all despairs, the mouthpiece of 
all angers, the club in every honest fist, the Wagnerian 
trumpet blast of all defiance, the diary of all dreams, 
the dynamite of all destructions too long postponed, 
the rainbowed splashing of all daring thoughts—this 
review, the review, our review, at last became a fact. 


It took a deal of courage. We had no money. We 
103 


a 


104. THE FAILURE 


had no very definite idea about what we wanted to 
do, about whom and what we wanted to assail. ‘There 
were few of us, and each with different opinions, am- 
bitions, and temperaments. We did not know just 
where to begin. Yet the review became a fact. 

We could not bring ourselves to wait for the air to 
clear. Our day had come. We had been talking of 
the thing so long! In our first cenaculum, a cheap 
restaurant, we passed whole mornings discussing a 
vehement, violent, incandescent magazine, to be called 
the Flame (Vampa) and devoted exclusively to mas- 


‘ terpieces. All the mediocrities submitted to us, all the 


stupidities—whether articles for publication or books 
for review—we planned to burn publicly in an open 
square at the end of each week. We would tell what 
was what to everybody, laying down the law even (and 
especially) to the big fellows, to the celebrities. For 
our gerente—an editor to assume legal and personal 
responsibility for all we said—we would choose the 
ugliest and strongest brute we could lay our hands on, 
some scowling uncommunicative giant who would sign 
each number with his picture and not with his name. 

Later on, with a different group of boys, we planned 
a paper of a high philosophical character, a journal 


‘of transcendental combat to be called Becoming 


one 


(Divenire), with the divine words of Heraclitus, 
mavrta per, for a motto. In the days when we had 
gone over to liberty—“‘liberty at all costs”—we began 
to talk of still another paper, which was to assail (spar- 
ing neither women nor children) myths, theories, re- 


I MAKE A SPEECH AT NIGHT 105 


igions, and individuals: The Iconoclast. On each 
these occasions we polished up our weapons, poisoned 
‘our arrows, sharpened our teeth; but inevitably, for 
one reason or another—especially under pressure of 
our- perennial persecutrix, Milady Poverty—we were 
forced to retire to cover, withdrawing into the dark- 
ness, the silence, and the discouragement of our 
dens. 

‘ But this time we were going through with the thing. 
sai would be able to stop us! Somehow or other 
| 





we would get the necessary lire together, and as for 
flee ideas ... 

We had even too many of them. However all that 
was needed was a strong hand on the tiller to keep the 
‘ship to its course. The other fellows, cowed by the 
“Doss,” would fall into line and follow all the more 
enthusiastically because they did not know where they 
were going. 

And so it happened. I was the one to give a name, 
an idea, a manifesto, and the initial push to this little 
crowd. 

_It was Hallowe’en, and we were anxious to get started 
by the first of the year. We had no regular place of 
meeting during those early days and the cafés were too 
expensive; so every evening, just after sundown, we 
gathered in some piazza or other, thence proceeding, 
through the din and the lights of the city, to our con- 

‘quest of principles and of men. 

It rained almost every night. The city pavements 

were wet, muddy, full of puddles. But we did not 


106 THE FAILURE 


notice. We made our way through the crowds, sepa- 
rated at times by passers-by or by wagons; then again, 
as disputes grew louder or as some new thought sud- 
denly turned up in one of our brains, stopping, coming 
together, breast to breast, shoulder to shoulder, under 
the ruddy hesitant glare of a street lamp. We had no 
thought for the water through which we splashed, for 
the mud that spattered our clothes, for the jostling of 
hurrying people, for the persistent drizzle that soaked 
our hats or the frank rain that beat on our torn ‘um- 
brellas. A mere nothing was sufficient to excite us, set 
us all afire: a title, a joke, an outline for some future 
article, a threat of a review announced menacingly 
against some famous name, a vague promise of an illus- 
tration or even of a subscription. 

Every evening for two or three hours at a time we 
thrilled ourselves and each other with such dreams of 
words and paper. Nothing else in our lives was of any 
importance; everything was judged according as it bore 
or did not bear on the forthcoming magazine. We felt 
that the life of the city, of the nation, of the world, was 
revolving feverishly around us as its center, as im- 
patient as we were, as anxious as we were, awaiting 
from us, a jabbering crowd of unknown enthusiasts, 
the burst of fiery light that would illumine everything, 
consume everything. How expect mankind to sit quiet 
while a revelation of new ideas and new geniuses, a de- 
struction of old errors and old prophets, was about to 
shake the world? ‘ 

In fact, new men came to join our group nail 


I MAKE A SPEECH AT NIGHT 107 


_they did not know us. As our open conspiracy became 
common talk among the younger men, many of them 
: hastened to join us, either out of curiosity or because of 
-hankerings similar to ours. When we first talked of the 
paper we numbered only three or four; but now new 
faces kept appearing almost every evening, men we had 
never seen nor heard of. There were new hands to 
shake, new candidates to convert, new converts to fire 
with our zeal: bedraggled students, in black suits, their 
haggard eyes rimmed with purple rings from over- 
study; artists full of noise and poverty; timid strip- 
lings with not even down on their chins, who listened, 
astonished and thoughtful, to the big words and hair- 
raising plans of their elders; even maturer men, with 
brown or blond beards, who, after sterile years of wait- 
ing, felt the spell of this sudden gale of youth and mad- 
ness. These newcomers had to be talked to almost in 
secret, one by one. They had to be tried out, tested, 
“placed”; then some bond of sympathy would develop 
with first one and then another; soon the intimate tu 
was generalized in a camaraderie which to-day made 
boon companions of strangers of yesterday. 

All these forces had to be drawn together, consoli- 
dated, made compact and manageable for a concerted 
effort, ready to be hurled, united and irresistible, against 
an enemy unconscious of being such. I alone, among 
us all, had a fairly clear idea and plan, not to say 
also a certain gift for theoretical coordination. In me 
they all recognized the leader indispensable for the 
success of the now imminent enterprise. After a month 


108 THE FAILURE 


or more of perambulating conference and confabulation 
in those stirring days of late autumn and early winter, 
I decided to prepare a great speech, or, if you wish, a 
great manifesto, to be read to those who had recently 
joined us, that they might say clearly, yes or no, 
whether we could count on their support even to a 
bitter end. Having, as I said, no headquarters of our 
own we had to fall back on the studio of one of our 
members—a painter, lately come from Rome, a youth 
of smiling well-contained enthusiasm. ‘The studio, to 
tell the truth, was not really his. It had been “kindly 
placed at his disposal” by one of the Academies—the 
Academicians little suspecting what sort of company 
that young man was keeping! ‘So much the better,” 
we said, ‘‘we will declare war on all Academies from 
within the very walls of an Academy!” 

To avoid waking the custodians of that austere 
palace and arousing untoward suspicions we had to 
enter secretly. The meeting was called, if I remember 
correctly, for ten or eleven o’clock in the evening. We 
were admitted through a rear door opening on a dark 
alley, where one of our number was stationed on guard. 
As each of us, muffled in cape or overcoat, stole up out 
of the black fog of the night, he was made to tiptoe 
up a flight of long winding stairs, and then through 
a series of long corridors flanked by wooden walls, 
until he reached the sumptuous garret-studio that was 
to witness the solemn and formal foundation of a paper. 
A mysterious light—three or four candles stuck into 
the mouths of empty bottles or driven upon nails pro- 


I MAKE A SPEECH AT NIGHT 109 


truding from the walls—suffused the great room which 
was divided by huge beams sloping diagonally into the 
€orners. Half-finished canvases, decorative panels of 
‘women dressed in red and of angels with silver trum- 
pets in their hands, heroic designs of nudes and of 
horses, languid faces of pre-Raphaelite beauties, sur- 
‘rounded us and stared at us with their eyes of white 
lead. We took what seats we could find, chairs, empty | 
packing cases, tables, even places on the bare floor. 
Within a quarter of an hour the studio was filled with 
cigarette smoke and the hum of subdued voices. 

But when I drew out the manuscript of my speech 
absolute silence fell. And I began to read. 

I cannot tell, at this late day, just what I said on 
that night of mock conspiracy and joyous expectation. 
There was a good deal of literature, much enthusiasm, 
not a little rhetoric, numberless promises, tremendous 
threats, and the effort, surely, to bring together and 
formulate the ideas, intentions, sentiments, and virtues 
of those young men who had so much faith in me and 
in themselves. Among us there were painters who 
hobnobbed with poets and poetry; men of letters 
stuffed with criticism and history; wild-eyed philoso- 
phers, ever looking for quarrels to pick and enamored 
of heights and depths; decorative pagans and impo- 
tent mystics; loafers and time wasters who had come 
out of curiosity—a mob, in short, where disorganiza- 
tion was the only system. And it was my task to 
find the word, the slogan, the objective, the purpose, 
that would touch each one and unite them all, sweep- 


110 THE FAILURE 


ing them into an irreparable commitment to our com- 
mon “cause.” | 

A name had to be found, a title, a symbol, which 
would accommodate everybody, poets and philosophers, 
painters and dreamers. It occurred to me that among 
all the names sacred to our traditions, whether Floren- 
tine, Tuscan, or Italian, none was as appropriate as 
that of Leonardo. 

Leonardo, Leonardo da Vinci, better than the best, 
had painted enigmatic portraits, flowers, rocks, and 
skies; more scientific than the scientists, he had delved 
into mechanics and anatomy, a patient searcher after 
Truth; a greater writer than the writers, he had written 
of life and of beauty in words of profound significance 
and with imagery of surpassing elegance; he had 
dreamed of the divine power of earthly man and—lover 
of the impossible—of the conquest of the skies. The 
vast thoughtful face of that old man who knew far too 
much—his finely drawn lips, tightly closed under his 
soft venerable beard—was before all our minds; and 
his thoughts (which in those days had for the first time 
| become accessible even to the poorest) were in the 
memories of many of us. In his name it was that we 
consecrated our emergence from silence. Our paper 
could be called Leonardo, and nothing else. 

A new upflare of faith was kindled in me on that 
eve of battle, as I stood there among those young men, 
all tugging eagerly at the bit and ready for any adven- 
ture. And in that impassioned nocturnal harangue I 
proclaimed our self-conscious, deliberate, and thor- 


ie eR 
_ —_ 


I MAKE A SPEECH AT NIGHT © 111 


“ough-going paganism as opposed to all the delinquency, 
cowardice, baseness, spinelessness of an age-old but 
Eibbit-hearted Nazarenism. I proclaimed our fierce, | 
hard-hearted individualism (or, as we said, personal- 
ism) as opposed to the solidaristic, collectivistic, social- 
istic insanity which was stultifying the spirit of youth, 
—leading young men to believe they were revolution- 
aries, whereas, in reality, they were sinking the vivid 
color of their own personalities in the mucky bog of a 
‘stupid, impotent, incompetent proletariate, or in the 
wretched low-down political life of a debased and 
humiliated Italy. And finally I proclaimed the un- 
‘compromising monopsychic idealism of the philoso- 
phers among us, who held that the external world 
did not exist, that reality was the shadow of a dream, 
that the universe was an unjointed fragment of 
our minds, that the old truths were lies put at the 
service of the brainless mob which saw certainty in 
contradiction, progress in destruction, and light in the 
absurd. Over this chaos, this clashing of tendencies, 
temperaments, actions, and reactions in us, I raised, 
as supreme ideal and common battle-flag, faith in un- 
prejudiced intelligence, in the divine virtue of poetry, 
in the perennial miracle of art. 

From time to time, raising my near-sighted eyes from 
the written pages and looking out into the play of dark 
shadows and reddish lights before me, I could see the 
attentive faces of my comrades, the disordered ranks 
of my regiment. In some of their eyes I thought I 
could recognize an eager, responsive yes. In my own 


112 THE FAILURE 


ears I seemed to hear the excited palpitations of 
twenty, thirty hearts. A current of burning sympathy 
swept toward me, enfolding me in its warmth and 
stirring me so deeply that the last phrases, which, on a 
solitary winter’s night at home, I had written out in 
my most flowing and harmonious style, came from my 
lips haltingly, smothered by a strange and unexpected 
emotion. Was I perhaps conscious that my life was 
beginning there, my real life as an apostle and an 
adventurer, there in that silent room, as I stood facing 
those men of the future, at that moment which was so 
full of solemnity for us all? 

I do not know what my audience thought of my 
ringing tumultuous oration. But, at any rate, almost 
all of them, immediately afterwards, signed a large 
sheet of paper that a provident secretary had prepared 
and spread out on the table; and every one of them 
came and shook my hand. Our magazine was a going 
concern! 

Each one promised a little money and much work. 


‘Chapter 16: Palazzo Davanzati 


A war tax of ten lire a month was imposed on each of 
us. Every one paid. There were the beginnings of a 
bureaucracy: a sort of secretary was appointed to as- 
sume the responsibility of giving body and substance to 
our dream. We went about in a crowd from printer to 
printer, looked upon with suspicion by directors and 
foremen, who could see we were innocent of experience 
and divine that we were poor. At last we succeeded in 
securing a room that was our very own—an editorial 
office! 

How beautiful in those days the Palazzo Davanzati 
was, its lofty stone facade—the picture of age and no- 
bility—fronting on the tumble-down ruins of the Mer- 
cato Nuovo: in the middle, a bombastic crown-topped 
coat of arms of the seventeenth century, jutting out, 
brown among its brown bosses; under the cornice, a 
fine loggia stretching across the upper story, open, airy, 
high up and free, Florentine, our very own, promising 
the passer-by, looking up to it from the street, a view 
of marble towers, of sun-bathed hills and serene skies. 
It was veritably the mansion of the old Florentine 
business man—money and all that money brings— 
solid, substantial, compact as the fortune he trusted to 
the banks of France and the Levant; dark, truculent 
as his partisan soul not yet weaned from factional 


Strife; ample and spacious as the mind of a humanist 
113 


114 THE FAILURE 


and an esthete; sane as the art of the skilled and in- 
dustrious craftsman he was. It may have been the 
influence of the name—but it reminded me somehow 
of the Davanzati translation of Tacitus, sober, stiff, but 
yet as meaty, as hearty, as full of nourishment, as the 
prose of our own Machiavelli! 

But you should have seen the inside of the palace as 
it was in our time! Wretched lighting and no trace of 
broom or mop, rickety creaking stairways, walls 
scratched and bruised, the galleries half boarded in, 
and the great court, with its many twists and turns, 
littered with rubbish and junk and smelling of worse. 
In recent years they have cleaned it up, scraped the 
walls, repaired the interiors, in fact, turned it into a 
regular museum, with a catalogue, a man in livery at 
the door, and an admission fee of twenty-five cents! © 
And you have to pay the twenty-five cents for the privi- 
lege of looking at all they have done: fresh paint, new 
tiling, oak furniture bought from the antiquarians, au- 
thentic paintings of great masters and the original 
Davanzati tapestries ransomed from the Jews! Every- 
thing now is neat, attractive, even comfortable, spe- 
cially arranged for the benefit of foreigners, snobs, and 
people of money (and the education that comes with 
money) who want to know what a Florentine palace 
of the fifteenth century (as restored by a second-hand 
furniture dealer) looks like. But this is not the 
Davanzati Palace that we knew—filthy, leaky, all to 
pieces, but nevertheless full of a living life, inhabited 
by real men and not by costumes, statuettes, and me- 


PALAZZO DAVANZATI 115 


-dieval chests. It is, especially, not the Palazzo Davan- 
zati that was the first home of a living, palpitating 
creation of ours, that shuddered at the tumult of our 
arguments, hissed with the clashing of our verbal 
swords, or echoed with the joyous songs and the mad 
laughter of our first invasion of the world. 

We rented one of the rooms in the place from a cor- 
-pulent and easy-going old man, who otherwise earned 
his livelihood by making cages for crickets and string- 
ing fly screens for the doors of barber-shops. It was 
not a large room and nothing much could be said for 
the furnishings. We removed the bed that was in it, 
the lamp stand and the bureau, keeping the table, the 
rocker, and a number of plain chairs with broken 
legs. In avery few days we had transformed this bare 
and dilapidated “furnished room” to suit ourselves. 
The landlord, as if ashamed of the dirty walls, brought 
us a bunch of laurel which we distributed here and 
there along the moldings, with a big branch hanging 
from the ceiling. We ourselves brought photographs 
and prints of masterpieces of art, so that the nude 
women of Titian, the dignified old men of Leonardo, 
and dancing figures of mischievous fauns and conceited 
Apollos were soon lurking among the shiny foliage of 
green. Two rapiers hung from nails on one of the walls 
and on the door—for we had a private entrance all our 
own—there was a placard with the name of our divine 
protector in fine black letters—under it a red sun with 
rays squirming out in all directions like angry snakes. 
Every evening that bare wretched room was the scene 


116 THE FAILURE 


of a celebration. Everybody came for two or three 
hours just to see what was going on, to start some 
argument, to tell some new story, to get some thrill or 
other. Anything was excuse enough for calling a gen- 
eral meeting. New recruits kept coming in, impatient 
and timid. My Giuliano was not in Italy at that time; 
but a letter from me giving him a lurid account of our 
preparations for the first issue, of my hopes for the 
future, of our advance announcement, brought him 
back home, posthaste, to join in the fray, where he 
immediately assumed a leading rdle. 

Manuscripts began to arrive (corrections, cuts, re- 
fusals! ); the first illustrations were patiently executed 
(little, hard, yellow pieces of box-wood into which the 
scoop cut furiously, sometimes slipping from the black 
guide lines); a printed notice was sent out, the first 
bulletin of war, booming with artillery and the clash 
of arms. What excitement when the first proofs ar- 
rived, still moist and on ugly paper, the ink not yet 
set, and full of blurs and ridiculous misprints, but for 
us divine messages of glory, our first strides toward 
men and immortality! 

We had made up our minds that our review must be 
unlike any other in every respect—unusual even in its 
outward appearance. We used a dark, rough, hand- 
made paper instead of smooth white. In place of ordi- 
nary engravings—the expressionless impersonal cliché 
and cold zinc—wood cuts made with our own hands! 
Figures and symbols in place of signatures! Poetical 
sonorous pseudonyms for our own unknown and dis- 


PALAZZO DAVANZATI 117 


cordant names! We all worked together in a feverish 
harmonious effort to make our first number beautiful, 
rich, original, startling in every detail. There was no 
division of labor: poets wrote on philosophy; philoso- 
phers became engravers; scholars tried their hands at 
lyrics; painters took up critique and theory. 
Confusion, topsy-turvydom, all around us, every one 
working under tremendous nervous strain, as though 
we were starting the universe over again; as though 
humanity were awakening from centuries of sleep or 
rising from the ground after a thrashing by some god. 
All the spirit of Sturm und Drang was with us as 
we stood there bending over proofs and drawings, 
screaming at the tops of our voices and with faces 


aflame over the problem of art, the genius of Michel- 
-angelo, the existence of matter. On our way out, down 


in the dirty courtyard, we started scuffles and fought 
sham duels just to work off the surplus energy gen- 
erated by our tremendous excitement. Any weapons 
were in order: rapiers, canes, fists. Some of our bouts 
were in earnest and many a time we went home with 
knuckles bruised and faces scratched, but happy and 
glowing with the exercise, as though our bodies had 
a full right to share in the bubbling over of our spirits. 

At last the suspense came to an end. After two 
months of talking, shouting, and working we went to 
press, and late one afternoon, shortly after seven 
o'clock, the first bundles of Leonardo were brought up 


the dark steps of the Palazzo Davanzati. 


The day was the fourth of January, 1903. 


Chapter 17: Vol. I, No. 1 


THE review was all that we expected it to be. It was 
unlike anything else; and it led, like its authors, an 
irregular rambling life. 

We began with eight pages, folio size, on hand-made 
paper and with designs, as I said, in wood cut. Issued 
every ten days, Leonardo dealt with everything more 
, or less, including politics, but more especially with art 
than with philosophy; and what philosophy we had was 
such a lyrical, capricious, bizarre affair that it would 
hardly have been recognized as philosophy. After a 
few months, however, the artists and writers among us 
became less punctual about their dues and about their 
work. Some liked our sheet, others didn’t (curiosity, 
enthusiasm, indulgence, pity—the whole gamut! ), but 
it was widely read, especially among the younger men. 
On the other hand, we could not collect our money 
from the news-dealers, and advance subscriptions did 
not reach a hundred. By summer-time, as a result, only 
our two philosophers were left—Giuliano and I. But 
we stuck to our guns. We changed the format to re- 
view size, appearing less frequently, but with more 
pages and on any kind of shiny paper that we could 
secure. Art was sidetracked to a certain extent. Lit- 
erature and politics were discarded entirely, and at last 


philosophy became mistress, queen, despot. 
118 


VOL. I, NO. 1 119g 


A philosophy of our own, I need not say; a philoso- 
phy which stood up proudly and caustically against the 
traditional philosophies of the hand-books, the pro- 
fessors, and the universities. We tried to revolutionize 
the very idea of philosophy—giving to thought, on the 
one hand, the freedom and fancifulness of poetry, and, 
on the other hand, to poetry—the poetry of the littéra- 
teurs (whom we detested )—a leaven, a ferment, an es- 
sence, of thought. Through us philosophy was to take 
on a new lease of life—a life quite in contrast to its 
past. Philosophy hitherto had always been rational: 
we set out to combat intellectualism with might and 
main. Philosophy had always been speculative and 
contemplative: we decided it should become something 
active, creative, taking its part in a necessary reforma- 
tion of the world. 

The first essential was to sweep the philosophy of 
the past—a philosophy of blind, spineless dullards— 
into the waste basket. It happened that the thought 
most in vogue in Italy at the time was Positivism; so 
we fell, like the wrath of Attila, on the Positivists. The 
barbaric and freedom-loving instincts of our earlier 
years came to life again in us: again we demolished, 
destroyed, dismembered, striking to right and left, 
sometimes with a perfect and a holy justice, then again, 
as our maturer judgment admitted, too precipitously, 
but always in good faith and in the name of a greater 
love. Such skirmishes and battles were the best part 
of every issue. We instituted periodical and regular 
massacres of nobodies and celebrities. We plotted ex- 


PE RE omecy 
~ 


120 THE FAILURE 


| terminations en masse, and revolutionary coups de 


orn, 


. ee 
er ren ene 


i 


‘ 
i 


main on the Bastilles of the schools and universities. 

Along with our work as housecleaners and policemen, 
we took some steps toward a reconstruction—outlines 
of new philosophies, discoveries, and expositions of new 
theories (mythical and Pindaric conceptions of the 
world); but especially platforms and programs, pro- 
grams and platforms. We had so many ideas, and plan 
followed plan so swiftly, that we had no time to de- 
velop and expand them. Our mental adventures were 
so numerous that no sooner had we formulated the 
outline of one system or of one question for research 
than another would force itself to the front in our 
minds. 

We were far from being destroyers, merely. We 
were the first, in Italy, to discuss many men, either our 
own or foreigners, forgotten or undiscovered, whom 
everybody is talking about to-day; though in those 
times even their names were unknown—and we spoke 
of them with reverence, love, and enthusiasm. We 
were among the first to stress and advertise certain 
modern ideas, certain tendencies, which others had 


- failed to understand or even to detect, certain schools 


and movements to which no one in Italy had given any 
thought or attention before. We reawakened interest 
in the old mystics; we stirred (strangely!) one or two 
young men to an unexpected liking for mathematics; 
we raised and discussed problems that seemed at the 
time very remote from our national interests. Art 
served as a natural accessory to the piquant novelty of 


VOL. I, NO. 1 121 


yur quite unusual enthusiasm for ideas: engraved initial 
etters, cuts, and drawings, headings in colored ink, 
with running horses, sword hilts, sheaves of grain, 
ziants with slings, knights with couched lances, were 
scattered over our pages like flowers tossed upon some 
yarade of earnest reformers, like trumpet blasts of joy 
tInging above the tramp, tramp, tramp of heroic vol- 
anteers. 

For some time after our first reorganization, Giuliano 
ind I worked alone and most of our copies were dis- 
wributed gratis. But soon other boys, a few at a time, | 
joined us, attracted even from long distances to our/ 
work; and then veterans, serious mature men, sensed 
that there was both sincerity and depth in our baccha- 
aalia of lyric idealism, in our ferocity as beardless con- 
quistadores. They gave us money, they gave us books, 
they sent us articles. 

On our long, broad, decorated pages, a strange and 
notley gathering appeared: acute mathematicians from 
Lombardy and colorful poets from Naples; philoso- 
dhers of international renown; learned jurists adorned 
with all the majesty of the bar; aged scientists, precise, 
uccurate, severe; and young students who were seeing 
their names in print for the first time. Our friends 
and subscribers increased in numbers; foreigners in 
far-away countries read and encouraged us; magazines 
30th in Italy and abroad began to review us, often 
favorably, at other times in sharp reproof. 

This was verily the heroic age of Leonardo; and it 
asted some two years and a half. We had become a 


122 THE FAILURE 


force to be reckoned with. All eyes were upon us. 
Every new issue, packed with ideas and resonant with 
fisticuffs, was eagerly awaited by a larger and larger 
audience. In some people surprise changed to en- 
thusiasm, disdain to open hate; even women—most of 
them impassioned young girls—though they did not 
know us personally, turned to us with a sympathy that 
might easily have been taken for love. 

Our review became the center and the organ of 
movements in thought; it was the starting point for 
new publications, collections, reprints; even to the plain 
readers of penny papers it began to stand for some- 
thing coherent, constructive, and precise. We two, its 
founders and creators, were no longer alone and un- 
known. We began to prepare and publish the first 
books, large and small, which were to broaden and con- 
solidate our influence. Other reviews asked us to write 
for them, and we got invitations to lecture here and 
there. 

Our names, always mentioned together like the 
names of two brothers, had become familiar to all the 
new generation, and many young men turned to us as 
spiritual guides, as missionaries of an unbiased faith in 
Mind Regenerate. We lived in a perpetual state of 
excitement, of discovery, of activity of all kinds. 
Every day there was a new soul to discover, a new 
book to read, innumerable proofs to correct, a new 
battle to fight, unknown comrades to answer, and new 
friendships to deepen. 

It was a real life that we now lived, a life of sur- 





VOL. I, NO. 1 123 


prises, of pitfalls, of creation, formation, expansion, 
,ascension. But its very intensity and success wore us 
yout. After two years Giuliano, my one companion, my 


strue comrade, left me for other ties, for other scenes. . 


‘I went on alone. Others came to me to help. New 
ipreents of thought flowed through the review. 

\ But these new colleagues, these latest arrivals, did 
jnot have the ardor—or the unselfish devotion of the 
‘first. Other dreams—more dangerous ones—laid hold 
}on my mind and clouded my judgment. I skirted the 
idark seas of magic. I thought I could discern in vari- 
‘ous ancient superstitions and disguised esotericisms 
‘the first steps leading to Divinity. My idealism be- 
.came mysticism, my mysticism occultism; and oc- 
‘cultism might have led me to theosophy, had I not 
stopped in time. 

) Gradually I let up in my work. My impetuousness 
(died down. ‘The interest others had been taking in 
‘me weakened. Once remarkable for its rich and ani- 
“mated variety, Leonardo now became merely interest- 
‘ing. It lost its outward charm. It had fewer pages. 
-The illustrations were discontinued, and literature re- 
‘appeared. It was just a review, in short. My mind, 
‘always astray among boundless ambitions, in compari- 
son with which a bit of printed paper seemed an insig- 
nificant ridiculous thing, wandered from my task. In- 
ternal dissensions and external estrangements hastened 
the end. For five years I had been there exploding, 
cursing, dreaming—before others, for others. It could 
‘no longer satisfy me. ‘The effort required was too 








124 THE FAILURE 


great; and at the same time the results to be achieved 
seemed pitiably small. Besides, the mind cannot ob 
on outflowing forever. It demands repose, leisure to 
renew, to refertilize itself after so many seasons of 
blossoming and harvesting. I felt the need of a new. 
period of meditation and reflection, of a new plunge 
into solitude. 

After five mad years of struggling, battling, search- 
ing, and striving, I deliberately killed the child of my 
dreams, a child dearer to me than my very self. It 
was mid-summer, the month of August. The cover of 
the last issue was blood red, on it a sheaf of gory 
arrows. Yet it had an air of sadness, dejection, dis- 
couragement—like a bier for a murdered love. 


|. #. 


Chapter 18: Flight from Reality — 


\Too many memories, too many regrets for lost things! 
All this warmth and color of the past, all these external 
facts and vicissitudes—what do they amount to? 
Poetry, literature—vanity! What matters here is the 
story of a soul, the story of my soul, not the story of 
_a palace or of a magazine. I should not fall into such 
weaknesses, and if shame has not erased all traces of 
them from my book it is because they too are symp- 
toms and proofs of a pathetic and sentimental element 
in my character which I am unable to repress even 
during my most violent orgies in logic and philosophy. 
+, Can it be that I shall ever prove unable to see idea 
without body and shadow, ever unable to understand a 
system of thought save through its manifestations as 
life, as daily experience of senses and emotion? Bark, 
husk, vesture, mask, these are—that I know, that 
even I know too well—nothing but bark, husk, vesture, 
mask! They are nothing more—nothing more sub- 
stantial, more intimate, more essential—than that. 
And bark drops off, garments wear out, masks lose their 
color; and what is left is concept, the inner indestruct- 
ible skeleton of Truth. And this covering is acci- 
dental, contingent, variable, transitory. Manifesta- 
tions for the mere convenience of others, vehicles 


through which these spiritual messages are transmitted, 
125 


126 ». THE FAILURE 


words, spoken words, written words, pages with print 
and pictures; sheets of paper published from time 
to time; sheets of paper bound in pamphlets, books, 
volumes—all these are but experiments, gropings, 
glimpses, murmurings, languages in formation, begin- 
nings of speech, which few understand and nobody 
cares to study. Every one of us who has a real life 
of his own—by that I mean an individual, personal, 
intimate life of sense and thought—is an Adam who 
must name all things over again for himself and con- 
struct a new vocabulary and a new language of his 
own. In his mouth the words of his fathers have a 
different savor, a different sound, a different meaning. 
He may speak of light, but his mind may be thinking 
darkness. Let him utter the most commonplace word 
—‘‘man” for instance! And he will be seeing a man 
of his own, a man who, you may rest assured, in no 
way resembles that man on the corner, or that man 
at the window, or Plato’s man, or God’s man; but is 
his own man—his ideal, his type, his dream, his model 
of a man! 

And each of us must recomprehend this inner Self 
of his, when it has passed over to the dead forever, 
with all the other dead, all the Selves he daily kills with 
the slow poison of oblivion. And when he would speak 
of that dead Self, he must reconstruct it in terms of 
the dictionary it used, in terms of its grammar, of its 
mental syntax. Fruitless indeed it would be to pick 
over the rags that were its gala attire or to repeat the 
epigrams it wrote to stabilize (to immobilize—to kill, 


FLIGHT FROM REALITY 127 


_that is) its intuitions and its fleeting mastery of the 
fleeting Eternal! Body and matter are not enough. 
We are looking for the spirit, for the thing that lies 
deepest down. If painting is impossible—well, try 
geometry! i am not going to give you a sentimental 
solo about myself. Must you have anatomy? Here 
is my body: take it, flay it, cut it up, dissect it! This 
is my body, this is my flesh—but where is the breath 
that gave it life, where the idea that gave it being? 
In this dust-heap of memories? Among this rubbish 
that strews the bottoms of these drawers? Among 
these papers spotted with the mold of almost ten years? 
Pray, spare your pains! I am not there! I alone can 
lay my hand on the central knot that binds, unites, 
unifies this tangled mass of the writings, proclamations, 
attacks, defenses, of a noisy apostle and propagandist. 
Now the period of Storm and Stress has passed (his- 
tory, anecdote, human interest! ); but the real source 
of all the noise, of all the tempest, lies in the Self 
that remains, in the undying and absolute Ego which 
has contact with the Eternal and must partake of the 
Eternal. 

This central knot of all my thinking of those days 
was a flight from Reality—non-acceptance, rejection, 
banishment of reality. A radical, deep-reaching Pessi- 
mism had ceased to be the ultimate and only basis of 
my conception of the world; and I no longer thought 
of proposing voluntary universal suicide by poison to 
a terrified humanity. But cosmic despair, though it 
had lost ground in me as theory, had become a perma- 


128 = : THE FAILURE 


nent state of mind in me and lingered as an ineradi- 
cable taint in my blood and in my soul. I no longer 
gave it explicit formulation, but it suffused every act of 
my brain. “No thought is born in me that does not 
bear the image of death,” wrote the aged Michelangelo; 
no thought on things was born in me that did not smack 
of bitterness and scorn. Young men, people say, are 
embodiments of hopeful confidence. That is not true, 
at least not true of us all. For when a youth (if he be 
not irreparably a pig) steps forward to take posses- 
sion of life, he is so filled with splendid hopes and 
aspirations, so certain of his near-sublimity, of his all 
but divine capacities, that he cannot fail to be con- 
tinuously slapped in the face by the disillusionment 
which life and reality bring. He has hoped for a flow- 
ering Paradise and he finds himself in a most putrid 
Hell. He thought to find brothers with hands out- 
stretched and meets instead a pack of ravenous snarl- 
ing beasts, ready to rush at him and tear him to 
pieces. He pictured life as faultless marble, granite 
of even grain, out of which he could hew his own image 
with the hard chisel of will; and instead he finds a 
lump of mucky dung in his hands which either cannot 
be molded, or which, molded indeed, will not hang 
together. 

Too much idealism, say the wiseacres who have 
gotten used to the smell. And “too much” is right! 
Young men die of that ‘too much” more often than 
of the little piece of lead they shoot through their 
hearts. But verily I say unto you: there is no surer 


FLIGHT FROM REALITY 129 


sign of “smallness” of nature than contentment with 
everything. Peace can come only when youth is over, 
when the cycle of inner and outer experience has been 
completed, when we find solace for the eternal nothing- 
hess of things in exquisite enjoyment of the Now that 
will never return again. 

So, at that time, I felt a violent dislike for the Real. 
I did not approve of the universe as it was and I did 
not accept it. Like a Capaneus stuck in an earthly 
Inferno, I drew up proud and scornful. I was inclined 
to deny reality and all imitations of Reality, to hold 
the laws of real life in contempt, and create a different 
and more perfect Reality of my own. 

What, in fact, was that spirit of infuriated anarchy 

I felt—my brazen disrespect of men and dogmas—if ° 

“not a reaction against the past, against everything fixed, 
disciplined, established, regular? What was my love 
for everything crazy and absurd except a revulsion 
from the commonplace, from the ordinary, from the 
safe and sane? Why such contempt for rules of con-' 
duct and good manners, for popular idols, for prudent 
counsel, for all the so-called “bourgeois virtue,” if I 
were not sick of the accursed fact that never changed, 
sick of wisdom, sick of “obligations,” sick of “sure 
things” and the worship they inspire? 

I attacked Positivism because the Positivists pre- 
tended to be nothing but registrars of a reality duly 
witnessed and attested under their hands and seals. I 
swallowed idealism whole, even in its extremes, because ;. 
its transference of everything to the mind, its calling 


nes 


eames - eee — eae PORTA 5h 


130 « THE FAILURE 


pihe very existence of matter into question, gave it a 

strong seasoning of extravagance and paradox. It was 
my loathing for the present that drove me back to the 
past, to solitary communion with a few of the great 
dead. It was loathing for all existing things that set 
me to dreaming. It was loathing for men that led me 
out into the rural silences to seek friendships with the 
trees and flowers. My favorite word in those days 
was: freedom—freedom from this and from that, from 
the Now and from the Hereafter, from the Here and 
from the There—freedom from everything. 

I wanted to strip the clothes from myself and from 
others, to return to complete nudity, to the terrifying 
freedom of the absolute universal atheist. And when 
I thought I had rid myself of all kinds of trumpery, 
that I had thrown off the ordinary cares and concerns 
of other mortals, then I decided to build a world of my 
own—and in two ways: by power of mind, and by 
activity of imagination—through will and through 
poetry. 

My much-talked-of “pragmatism” of those days did 
not indeed concern me so much as a rule of research, 
as a test of procedure, as a tool of method. I was look- 
ing farther ahead. At that time a thaumaturgic aspi- 
ration was much on my mind—a need, a desire so 
to purify and strengthen ‘my spirit as to enable it 
to act on things without recourse to instruments and 
media, thus eventually achieving omnipotence and 
the power of working miracles. So I did not stop 
at the “‘will to believe.” I went on to the “will to 


FLIGHT FROM REALITY 131 


-do”—to the “possibility of doing.” If only my 
_ will could extend its scope from my body to the things 
around me—so that the whole world would be its 
body, obedient to its every command, just as these 
few muscles of mine are obedient to it now! I pre- 
tended to start from a logical precept (pragmatism); 
but in my secret heart I was jealous of Divinity and 
-é@ager to become a rival of Divinity! 

A similar feeling led me toward art. I had no pa, 
tience with “literature”: all that was false, elegant 
fictitious, factitious, decorative, as implied in tha 
‘word, repelled me. And though I loved some of the 
old poets with all my heart I had an unconquerable 
dislike for people who wrote poetry, short stories and 
novels for the amusement of others and for gain. 
_ Philosophy seemed to me much higher and nobler 
than art, but philosophy itself led me back to art. 
To express certain of my thoughts with greater force 
and warmth I began to make inordinate use of imagery. 
I tried the myth as a form of exposition; from the myth 
I developed the legend; then I wrote dialogues and 
“visions”; and little by little I admitted conversations 
between “types” taken from poetry and _ tradition, 
which soon began to live on their own account, speak 
a different language, and take a hand in new adven- 
tures. Thus I passed almost unconsciously from a 
purely lyric self-expression to what was virtually the 
tale or the short story; and the idea which had been 
my goal, my all, was merely part of the raw material 
for my imagination to work with. The panting rest- 


132 THE FAILURE 


less churning of thoughts in my brain, the bitterness 
of my disillusionment, the impetuousness of my apos- 
tleship, seemed to find more adequate and powerful 
expression in these poetic creations of ambiguous form. 
So, quite apart from any intention of mine, a world of 
phantasy grew up about me in opposition to the real 
world, and into it I could withdraw to weep and live in 
my memories. In it I was master and king above all 
law. ‘That is where, in those days, I met my modern 
Devil; listened to the confessions of my “sick gentle- 
man” and my “Queen of Thule”; harkened to the 
groans of the unhappy Hamlet and the confidences of 
Giovanni Buttadeo and Don Juan Tenorio. They 
came forward to meet me out of the shadows of the 
Unreal; yet they seemed to me more alive than the 
living that scuffled along the pavements at my side; 
and only in their company did I feel that I could 
understand and be understood, love and be loved. A 
troubled, cloudy, murky world it was, where darkness 
overmastered light and the tragedy was the common-. 
place; a world that was inhabited by youths pale and 
disillusioned, and men possessed of fixed ideas and tor- 
tured by wild fears; a world where actions were few 
and far between, but thoughts tempestuous; where 
the plausible blended with the fantastic and life with 
death. It was another world. It was my world: a 
world of darkness and terror, yes, but at least not 
this world, the world where everybody lives! 

So while I was trying to subjugate the real and re- 
fashion it through the miracles of a sublimated Will, 


FLIGHT FROM REALITY 133 


_I was actually creating a provisory substitute, reality 
peopled by the docile specters of my Fancy. Poetry 
is a ladder leading to divinity—to labor in art is itself 
a beginning of creation. Poet and prophet to-day— 
and to-morrow, perhaps—God! 


Chapter 19: My Dead Brothers ~ 


I pw not accept reality. 

These are the most temperate words I can find to 
express my nausea at the physical, human, rational 
world that shut me in, denying me air to breathe and 
space to flap my restless wings. Yet they are not the 
exact words I should wish. They do not say every- 
thing, they do not make everything clear. I did not 
accept that reality; but only because I wanted an- 
other—a purer, more perfect, more angelic, more divine 
reality; and I did my best to see the spiritual har- 
monious world I looked forward to come into being, 
as the statue, which the artist has seen in his mind and 
willed to be, springs from a rough block of marble 
freshly quarried from the mountain side. I did not 
accept an ordinary, superficial reality because I sought 
a better, truer, profounder one. I denied the past, I 
denied the present to fix my gaze, my aim, my heart’s. 
desire, on a grander miraculous future. 

And even with this I have not said everything: I 
have within me a feeling somewhat akin to remorse, 
and I am unable to suppress it. I deny the past—but 
is it not to the past that those great souls belong, 
those brothers of mine—dead and buried in their tombs 
but still so alive and present to me, who consoled me | 
during the years of my solitude, during the years of 
my exodus to the Promised Land? ‘They are the ones 

134 P 


MY DEAD BROTHERS 135 


-who showed me the path to freedom and gave me the 
thoughts, the figures, the words, which best express 
my real self. Be I great or small, itis they who made 
“me what I have been, what I am! They gave me 
comradeship during sleepless nights, refreshment dur- 
ing periods of repose, encouragement and inspiration 
‘in combat—the guardian angels of my best days! To 
them, to them alone, I owe that contempt for medioc- 
rity, that anxiety for perfection, which ever leaves me a 
sort of heroic dissatisfaction with myself. They first 
pushed me toward the heights, giving me a ladder for 
“escape, weapons for revolt, tools for destruction, and 
my very vision of a celestial universe, of a beatitude 
without burdens and without baseness. How could I 
deny them without repudiating myself and all that was 
best i in me? 

And them, indeed, I did accept. Accept? I sought 
them out with more love than a son has for a loving 
father, with more admiring tenderness than a boy feels 
for his big brother. These dead and my hills! These 
dead and my trees! These dead and my ravenous 
hungry spirit! Ah—I contradict myself? Not in the 
least! That part of my past which they constitute 
(those men, those dead, those teachers, friends, allies 
of mine) gave me my scorn for all the rest—gave me 
the courage and the intelligence to obtain my freedom. 
Indeed I accepted just enough of the past to make the 
test hateful to me. I loved them because they incited 
me to this hatred. I sought them out because they 
aided me in my escape. 


136 THE FAILURE 


But what need have I of such excuses? These I 
have been making are, to tell the real truth, after- 
thoughts, posthumous quibblings to explain a sym- 
pathy that was spontaneous and ever fresh. I was 
happy with them, and with them only. I saw the 
world through their far-seeing eyes. I thought in the 
directions their thought suggested. They were as 
necessary to me as bread, as water, as sky, as all pure, 
good, wholesome things that cost nothing and without 
which one cannot live. I loved them more than any 
one could ever love a woman, for a woman has but one 
face and one soul, while they gave me ten souls, a 
thousand souls, a soul for joy and a soul for sorrow, a 
soul for sublation and a soul for sanctification. I loved 
them passionately, madly, immoderately. Have I not 
said that I always sought for greatness; that I—small, | 
despicable, crazy as I may have been—was always 
determined to be great, to make myself great? Only 
with them, with their genius, with their greatness, could 
I be sure always to find and feel the panting urge 
which impelled me ever toward the heights far above 
the bestial mob of the plains. They gave me that 
panem solum by which I could live. They gave me 
courage to trust my native instincts. They spurred 
me on when my strength failed. Their dead eyes 
smiled at me from the frames around their pictures, 
when I grasped my pen between my lean fleshless 
fingers and forced it across the paper in my rambling 
handwriting to spin the thread of an idea or expand a 
dialogue between my phantoms, ; 


MY DEAD BROTHERS 137 


I felt them so close to me that they seemed to be 
all mine and so alive in spirit that I never thought of 
them as dead. If, by chance, I remembered that their 
bodies were nothing but ashes, dust, that their voices 
were stilled forever, I grieved at having lost them too 
soon, at having been born in an age too late to know 
them. Never have I felt such dislike of death as at 
those moments. Never have I loved any warm living 
being as I loved those dead—cold corpses buried under 
monuments and centuries. At times it seemed as 
though they actually were with me in my room; or 
that I met them on streets that I liked better than 
other streets; or on the banks of roaring rivers, or by 
crumbling walls; and many a time I tried to talk to 
them, to tell them of my great love and my loneliness. 
But they would look at me in silence, without moving. 
If I tried to step nearer, they would vanish. 

The books in which I first became familiar with 
their thoughts, their loves, their hates, I remember in 
their shapes, their colors, their styles of type, even in 
the spots and creases of their pages; and I shall never 
forget them. Playthings? Sentimental trinkets of 
loves that have passed? Far more than that! Sacred 
telics, real relics, these mementos of my best life— 
dirty, cheap volumes full of misprints and wretchedly 
executed; editions printed wholesale at a cent or two 
a copy; books bought secondhand, covered with ink- 
spots and pencil-marks, their pages torn and dog-eared; 
heavy tomes bound in leather and kept apart by them- 
selves like holy things. 


138 THE FAILURE 


And I remember the very places, the very moments 
in which I absorbed them into my being, in which I 
felt them closest to me—mine—radiant before my eyes 
in a brilliant, penetrating light. Dante! Dante I asso- 
ciate with summer dawns, a cold stone bench high up 
above the city, the soft splashing of a near-by foun- 
tain in a pool of muddy water. Shakespeare I read for 
the first time by candle light on winter nights in my 

‘chilly, uncomfortable room. I first felt Baudelaire on 
ae of autumn, when the leaves were dropping from 
the trees along the deserted drives of the Cascime, and 
the silver Arno was turning crimson for the festival of 
sunset. Shelley means spring to me—a path leading 
through a grove of acacias and ash trees, where I sang 
aloud the most anguished invectives of Prometheus. 
Taine carries me back to the great reading-room of 
the library,—cold light filtering through dust-covered 
skylights, across which from time to time white pigeons 
/flew. I probed the Unicum of Stirner on the brick 
jwall of grassy hallowed ground by the side of a church, 
where a faint odor of incense still lingered—a hilltop, 
“cool breezes, a large shady elm. I declaimed the verses 
|of Zarathustra behind a stone shelter which I had 
ae up against the wind near a shepherd’s hut on 
the lonely pasture lands of Pratomagno summit. 

But these were not the only companions of my se- 
cluded vigils at home, of my thoughtful walks and 
delicious hours of repose among living things under 
open skies. I forget no one of you—you, the true 
loves of my teens and early twenties. One by one you 


MY DEAD BROTHERS __ 139 


pass before my memory recalling—with a clutch at my 
heart—a date, a view, a verse, a thought. I have a 
debt to pay to all of you, a debt which I am paying 
as I go on through life trying to pass on to others a 
spark, perhaps, of the fire you kindled and kept aflame 
in me. 

_ And to you, the poets, I owe the deepest debt! For 
it was you who took me up, like Satan, to a mountain 
‘top and whispered in my ear: “Behold! All this 
wealth, this youth, this beauty is yours, can you but 
see and understand it!” To you, Dante—father 
Dante!—I owe a fierce longing for Paradise and my 
coarse, vulgar, violent explosions of noble scorn! To 
you, Leopardi—my brother Leopardi—exquisite en- 
joyment of ineluctable despair, and a clear pitiless 
vision of the ridiculous infamies of man; to you, Shel- 
ley, heart of hearts (drowned like a god in mare 
meum), the pathetic vivification of nature, the love 
of sumptuous refinements in a gilded world and 
pity for defeated giants; to you, Baudelaire, frater- 
nal spirit, a perverse and unconquerable delight 
in cursing, a passion for the bottomless pits of carnal 
existence from which there is no escape and over which 
there is no heaven, and an ecstatic transfiguring of | 
everyday pettiness and baseness; to you, Heine, the 
shrill laughter that conceals sadness, zest for disem- 
boweling the puppets of the mythologies; to you, Walt 
Whitman, friend of my early childhood, the sweeping 
breath of the sea, of the multitudes, of the life of men, 
a warm and generous embrace of all beings and all 





140 ~ THE FAILURE 


peoples; to you, Carducci, poet of my Tuscany’s marsh- 
lands, the furies of a restless lion, a love of cold gales 
from the north, of uncompromising revolutions, of 
pugnacious Dianas, and of Italy’s greatness. 

Can I tell what I owe to Shakespeare, what I owe 
to Goethe? Were they poets merely, authors of 
dramas, tragedies, mysteries? Did they not show me 
worlds that have never been described in books, lead 
me on to vaster scenes, introduce me to ideas made 
flesh, let me eavesdrop on the dialogues of heroes, see 
the wonders of Blessed Isles? Did I not learn from 
them that life is a dream and the dream reality, that 
the most profound, the most terrifying, the most illumi- 
nating thoughts are not to be found in the volumes of 
the philosophers? Did I not talk more than once with 
the pale Hamlet? Did I not go seeking the real life 
with Doctor Faust? Were they not both living 
familiar parts of my being? 

In my mind Shakespeare and Goethe joined Don 
Quixote and the Idiot, sometimes Julien Sorel and 
Peer Gynt, and often Doctor Teufelsdroeck consorting 
with Didimo Chierico and Filippo Ottonieri. It is they 
_ who made me, who still sustain me, and govern me. 
} From Cervantes I took the sacred madness of the ideal 
and scorn for the vulgar sanity of the Sancho Panzas; 
from Dostoievski the sacred madness of love for the 
unfortunate and the tremendous fascination of inner 
tragedies of the soul; from Stendhal the stoicism of 
the man who without flinching can see things of this 
world as they are, and an inclination for secretiveness 


MY DEAD BROTHERS ~I4I 


born of modesty; from Ibsen self-respect, self-knowl- 
edge, self-defense; from Carlyle, the discovery of spirit 
under symbol and vesture, of the everlasting “Yea” in 
the everlasting “Nay”; from my two Italian brothers 
that melancholy pensive shrewdness which understands 
but can hardly restrain its tears. 

But why do I not mention—and before all others— 
Edgar Allan Poe? It was he who introduced me to the 
complexities of terror. And Novalis? For it was he 
who won me with a mystic belief in power. And what 
of the philosophers? Plato: handsome boys, shrewd 
old men, myths, sophisms, banquets, and porticos 
along a seashore. Berkeley: Hylas and Philonous, 
spending the foggy hours of a London dawn in a park, 
demolishing matter and universals. Schopenhauer: dis- 
covery of thought and pain, of will and renunciation. 
Nietzsche: sunshine, destruction, noble mountains, 
snow-capped, and the laughing dance of genius set free. 
Stirner: dialectic anarchy, hideous solitude, an elo- 
quent gospel of egoism, an extremist rebellion of the 
timid man. But among the thinkers I loved more than; 
all others the wreckers of moralities, those who knew 
what men are like and were not afraid to say so; 
heroic but resigned despairers, cynics who scrape the 
paint off the frescos of idealism and disclose the holes | 
in the plaster underneath, who cut into silver plating | 
that the cheap lead it hides may be paid for at its 
real worth; severe, courageous logicians; men without 
ideals; the intellectual customs guards and quaran- 
tiners of humanity. Especially the French! The| 


Nm Ry 








142 — THE FAILURE 


rhythmic flow of Montaigne’s wisdom; the volcanic 
eruptions of Diderot; the clear and vivacious sys- 
tematizing of Taine; even the gay witty skepticism of 
Voltaire; the moral polytheism of Brewster, and the 
naturalistic cynicism of Remy de Gourmont. — 

This was my world, my real country, my real fra- 
ternity. This divine city of my soul had for back- 
ground the mountains of Leonardo; for monuments, 
the heroes of Michelangelo—sad even in victory; for 
pictures, the lights and shades of Rembrandt. From 
time to time the solemn cadences of Bach’s sonatas, 
the more passionate movements of Beethoven’s sym- 
phonies, the heroic motifs of Wagner’s choruses, broke 
the silences. Only among such thoughts, such images, 
such sounds, did I feel that the world was worthy 
of me. 


Chapter 20: Small Remainders 


» But stronger than my love for the great dead was my 
scorn for the small-fry living—for all of them, for 
- those I knew and for those I had never seen; for those 
who belittled me and those who applauded me; for 
those who welcomed me and those who snubbed me. 
With the exception of three or four of my com- 
_ panions who shared my hatreds and adventures, I did 
not consider any living man my equal. No man seemed 
worthy of judging me, or even of standing at my side. | 


\I seriously believed that I was the only living being 


without prejudices, without blinders for my eyes, with- 


out sham, without nonsense, without stupidities inside | 


my head—the only one capable of routing hypocrisies 
and exposing frauds; of ridding Valhalla of old gods 
and modern fools; of stripping off the finery that a 
prostituted habit and convention paraded in public; of 


sce 


liberating humanity from the humiliating mental servi-— 


tude that shackled it. My purpose was to free (the 
word I used to myself was “help”) the very ones whom 
I scorned. I scorned them because they were not 
free; and because they so richly deserved my scorn, I 


was anxious to free them. I wanted to raise them to~/ 


i renee 


my level, not stoop to theirs. It was to make men of © 


them that I told them they were beasts; it was to prove 
my love of them that I used the lash. If I descended 
143 


144 THE FAILURE 


to their plane in so doing, it was only the better to en- 
joy lashing them. I wanted to make them worthy of 
me, worthy of the ideal type of humanity which I rep- 
resented—a humanity wholly free, wholly spiritualized, 
immune to the taint of any faith. Savage master that 
I was, I did not try to coddle my pupils with music and 
blandishments. My method was to wake them up, 
shake them up, set them moving! At that time I 
might have taken Petrarch’s verse as the motto of my 
life: 


“To venni sol per isvegliare altrui.” 


‘I came to arouse people, yes; but arouse them not by 
coaxing them, tickling them, but by using a club on 

_ their backs, gripping them by the front of their coats, 

/and slamming them back against a wall that their 

| shame and anger at such insulting treatment might 

force them to a show of gumption, an act of real man- 
hood. I behaved toward men much as animal trainers 
go at their lazy sleeping lions in a menagerie. I jabbed 
them in the ribs, I burned them with hot irons; I gave 
them ferocious cuts with the whip—jabbed them with 
the most bitterly sarcastic thrusts I could find; burned 
them with hard cruel epithets and pitilessly sincere ac- 
cusations; whipped them with sneers at the meanness 
of their lives, the insignificance of their ideals, the 
primitiveness of their ideas, their ignorance of every- 
thing, and their incapacity for deep understanding and 
sound reasoning. 


SMALL REMAINDERS 145 


No one was safe from my sudden and rapid offen- 
Gives. If there was no question up for discussion I 
brought one up on purpose, starting an argument on 
my own territory, involving my opponent in difficulties 
of my own making and raining merciless blows upon 
him. If there was a real issue I would turn it and 
- twist it in such a manner that I alone was left on the 
battlefield brandishing syllogisms and hurling vitupera- 
tion to right and left. If some timid individual ap- 
_ peared, I would force him to say something and then 
I would ridicule him for its absurdity. If I met a 
-garrulous talker I found indescribable delight in 
humbling his assurance and reducing him to silence. 
If an unpleasant truth could be told to anybody I was 
always the first to come out with it without evasion 
or circumlocution. If I was aware of a defect, a short- 
coming, a weakness in any one, I soon found a way to 
take advantage of it for a pointed thrust or a formal 
indictment. When my friends wanted to rid themselves 
_of a bore, a timekiller, a pedant, a fool, they left the 
matter to me; and exceptional indeed the case where 
he did not disappear once and for all in confusion and 
humiliation. I had but to find the hidden canker in a 
man’s soul to make it eventually the subject of remark, 
bluntly accusing him of it coram populo. And no 
sooner had I sensed the most vulnerable and painful 
point in some person’s inner life than I touched on 
that point and focused attention upon it. A random 
unguarded phrase and I was capable of drawing the 
most unexpected conclusions from it, developing its 


146 THE FAILURE 


implications, showing its remote bearings on character; 
and I would hammer and beat upon them until my poor 
victim begged for mercy or took to his heels. A few 
spoken words sufficed me to analyze the psychology of 
almost any man, and when I had taken it to pieces I 
would put it together again and set it down with a 
thump in front of him that he might see himself as 
others saw him and blush for shame. 

Everything served my purposes in this daily arta 
of sniping and sharpshooting against mankind: learned 
quotations, new ideas, names of unknown “authorities,” 
arguments ad hominem, dialectic quibbles, literalisms 
in handling words; contradictions caught on the wing; 
banter, wit, violence of manner, jest, ridicule, glances 
of commiseration, guffaws, grins, insults. Anything 
went! All was fair! If only I could make these idiots 
see the superiority of my mind and of my view of 


‘things! When my victims did not come to me I went 


Bree. 


to them to smoke them out of their retirement. Hav- 
ing cleaned up one neighborhood, I would go looking 
for new people, to enjoy a fresh choice and a greater 
variety of despicable souls. 

In a short time I acquired the reputation of being 


either a “terror” or an intolerable boor; and I was 


flattered by both judgments. For some people I was 
an ill-mannered snob; for others an apostle of frank- 
ness; for some I was a disagreeable rascal; for others 
a hero of sincerity. Many, the majority even, shunned 
me as they would the plague; others, of stronger metal, 
stood the strain, sought my company, and eventually 


SMALL REMAINDERS 147 


forced my friendship. This method of dealing with 
men was not alone the necessary outlet of my belliger- 
ent rough-knuckled character, nor even merely the 
natural counterpart of my boundless pride and conceit: 
it was also a method of trying men out, a touchstone 
for finding the best and the strongest. Those who; 
took offense at my words did me a favor by going i 
away. Others hated me; and this too was a gratifica-| © 

tion, for I have always felt a greater need of enemies 
than of friends. Some valued me the more highly. 
_ Fascinated by my very violence, they took their medi; 
_ cine in good part because they realized that more often 
than not I spoke the truth, and that the truth thus 
brutally stated was of far more benefit to my victims 
than it was to my progress in this world. I made some 
friends by sheer dint of drubbing and roughing them. 
Keener than the rest, these few were able to see the 
affection hidden under my scorn. They knew that be- 
hind my shield with its Gorgon’s head a poor senti- 
mental poet was shivering with far more capacity for 
friendship than the smooth-tongued, perfectly man- 
nered youths of society. 

All the more so since I did not always use my 
bludgeon on the people about me. I liked, for in- 
stance, to stir them up with sudden questions as seri- 
ous, as fundamental as they were unexpected, questions 
such as are never put to people and which may even, 
seem absurd and useless, questions which men hardly 
dare to ask themselves, and yet which involve their 
whole understanding of the world, all values, and all 


148 THE FAILURE 


life. I was bent on forcing others to think, to reflect, 
to examine into themselves, into their souls, their fu- 
tures, their ideals. I wanted to turn their gaze inward 
upon depths which they shrank from penetrating, to 
bring them face to face with their inner selves, to see 
themselves as they really were, in order then to change 
their minds, to turn in some other direction, to quicken 
their pace, in order, at any rate, not to forget—if they 
were still in time—to change. Many men owe their 
first awakening to me, or else crises of terrible dejec- 
tion from which they finally emerged as real men, 
though returning to the pathways they had previously 
chosen.’ In this world of heavy and eternal sleepers 
some one must have the courage to shout, ‘““Who goes 
there?” every now and then and to sound reveille at 
an earlier hour than usual.“ There must be some one 
to wipe the rouge from people’s cheeks that they may 
have one good honest view of their real freckles. If 
then they haven’t the courage to see themselves as 
they are, let them return to their deception again. 
Let them pose as honest men though they be only 
rascals. Let them pose as geniuses though they are 
only fools! \ That is no concern of mine! I have done 
my duty! ' 

So hate me then, and cursé me! Look the other 
way when I go by. Men are not born again of 
poultices and homeopathy. It takes strong ~and 
radical treatment. You must cut where there is cut- 
ting to do; cauterize where the gangrene has started. 
We must rout out of their quilts and blankets those 


SMALL REMAINDERS 149 


who have never known the fresh fury of the wind or 
‘the healthy sting of driving snow save through the 
_ window panes of comfortable houses. If you can’t 
stand fresh air—so much the worse for you and so 
much the better for the undertaker! 

I in no way regret my frankness and belligerency 
in the past. I cannot help without hurting. I cannot 
love without despising. 


| 
| 


Chapter 21: And Not a Word of Love? ~ 


I HAVE passed my twentieth year. Youth is now 
overflowing into its full vigor. Real life has begun, 
life in closer contact with a concrete humanity. No 
longer sufficient unto itself, it serves notice of inten- 
tion to spill over and spread out upon others—upon 
everybody. And of love—not a word? How can 
that be? 

The age of twenty is the classic springtime of ro- 
mantic idylls that makes even the hardest hearts 
swell with life and burst into blossom. It is the pagan 
summer of the senses, the Herculean July of uncon- 
trolled desire, when in every glance lurks a longing for 
pleasure, when every hand seeks a beautiful body to 
caress, when kisses burn like fever on lips that will 
not, cannot, be torn apart. It is the season of love in 
the short year of life. At this period woman (in long 
braids and in short skirts borrowed from her cousin 
or powdering her face at the dresser of a maiden aunt) 
enters the life of a man, and plants in his flesh or in 
his heart memories that will outlast all others. From 
then on a man is no longer alone; he no longer be- 
longs entirely to himself: this woman, virgin or pros- 
titute—it matters little—begins to possess him and 
make him over. 

150 


AND NOT A WORD OF LOVE? 151 


Is this not the moment for confidences—confessions 
| about timid affections, sentimental sorrows, consuming 
passions? Of love, not a word? 

No, my lady! (Of course, no one but a woman 
would think of asking such a question.) No, signora! 
I can give you no hope! Love will not be mentioned 
either here or later on. If you have begun to read 
this story of a man’s life with the indiscreet hope of 
“meeting a woman sooner or later, throw it aside right 
now and think no more about it. I will not write of 
love, nor will I introduce women of any kind. 

If this is a novel, it will be a novel without love. 
If it is history, it will be history without women. Dull 
perhaps, incomplete I dare say, unconvincing doubt- 
less! As you will, my sweet lady, but so it shall be, 
so it must be; because J will it so—I who am master 
of my life, my soul, the things I do. 

Oh, dear lady, it is not that love has not played 
its part in my life. On the contrary! Love, I mean 
too, in all the senses of that word: platonic love, love 
of the bull-pens, spiritual love, physical love, senti- 
mental love, sensual love. 

There have been women in my life. “Women,” the 
plural of “woman”! I don’t say many, please don’t 
misunderstand! I was not a Don Juan—TI couldn’t 
be! But there were women, real women, women of 
flesh and blood—and nerves; women like the women 
we admire in the great novels and hope sometime to 
own in real life. 

So then, women! 


152° THE FAILURE 


Girls, enthusiastic and over-ardent, simple and 
wholesome girls, without a trace, a spot, of literature; 
and—alas!—married women, intelligent, cultured, de- 
voted, free; and again—I am not ashamed to confess 
it—harlots—melancholy women these, who carried on 
their trade more honestly than many others. Some of 
them were beautiful; some were pretty; some were 
attractive; some were interesting. I loved them all, one 
after another, loved them with soul and body, or soul 
alone, or body alone. I was the ingenuous lover and 
the bold lover, the tender lover and the jealous lover, 
the noble lover and the mean lover—as all men are 
with all women. I have made my bold declarations 
in a trembling voice tightly clasping my little hands, 
attempting to snatch a premature kiss from lips which 
I hoped would soon say a languid “yes” to me. I too 
—of a morning when the sun was young or in pale twi- 
lights of dawn—have stood waiting under windows for 
the beckoning of a white hand, the movement of a cur- 
tain, the flash of a light, the waving of a handkerchief. 
I too have written letters, hundreds of them, letters 
of poetry, and letters of despair, letters imploring 
and letters exalting—all sealed with the usual and the 
empty word (used by all lovers): forever. I have 
pressed other breasts to my breast. Many pairs of lips 
have I touched with my lips. Many pairs of eyes have 
I closed with my caresses. Every out-of-the-way 
street in my city brings a name to my mind, a flower, 
a word,—a name that I never mention now; a flower 
that lies crushed and dry between the pages of a dis- 


AND NOT A WORD OF LOVE? "153 


_ carded book; a word,—a word, alas, that I would so 
willingly forget! 7 

Yes, dear lady, I too have been in love, and some 
women have—I take it for granted—loved me. I have 

_ given them pain and pleasure as other men have. I 
too know the fevers of anticipation, the agonies of un- 

certainty, the torments of doubt, the pains of expec- 

- tancy, the tortures of jealousy, and the divine irrespon- 
sibility of a violent embrace when two souls try to tear 
each other from their bodies in an effort to become one 
soul. 

If I refuse to speak of love it is not because I have 
not known it in all its degrees and in all its styles. I 
too have a soul, dear lady, a heart full of throbbing 
blood. I was not always insensitive to beauty. I was 

not born impotent, nor did I ever choose to become 
a eunuch. 
_ As a child I knew all the terrors of chaste passion. 
As I grew older I, like all other men, regularly lost 
my chastity; I had my loves—illicit passions which 
my elders forbade, conventional engagements which my 
elders approved, and I landed—I, even I—at last in 
the lap of holy wedlock. 
In view of all this you would be justified in asking 
me: “What more do you want?” 

If you only knew, dear lady, what more I have 
wanted! 

I have wanted, and I have never found, the ideal 
woman, the woman who really takes possession of a 
man and makes him over. 


154° THE FAILURE 


I have wanted, and I have never found, the woman 
who can take her place in the spiritual history of a 
soul, in the mental romance of a mind. ‘The eternal 
feminine leads us ever upwards.” Perhaps it does, I 
am in no mood to quarrel with Wolfgang Goethe to- 
day. But I must say that so far as I am concerned, 
the eternal feminine has led me neither up nor down, 
neither this way nor that way, ever! 

No, woman never appeared to me—either as a Bea- 
trice who takes you by the hand and wakes you from 
your worldly dreams to lead you to realms celestial; 
or as a Circe, who changes men, born to virtue and to 
wisdom, into pigs rooting about in opulent gardens, 
rich in shade and in acorns. 

Women neither corrupted me nor purified me. They 
were a Side issue, so to speak, in my existence; guests, 
welcome or unwelcome, in my moments of leisure; 
hopes and promises of comfort in my hours of distress; 
purveyors, desired, of joy or pain; beloved, affectionate 
companions of unhappy days; intermezzi, voluptuous 
or passionate, in my hard studious life as a discon- 
tented laborer; extravagant, uncritical admirers of my 
work—but never, if I must be boorishly frank, never 
guides, benefactresses, inspirations, givers. 

They took from me, they asked of me, and I gave 
them of my life, my youth, my time, my illusions, my 
thoughts; but they gave me nothing back. The story 
of my inner life was never enriched or changed by 
their presence in it. 


AND NOT A WORD OF LOVE? — e155 


I am not complaining! On the contrary: I gave 
_ “because I had something to give—there was plenty, the 
larger part, left over for myself. I asked nothing of 
them for my mind or for my soul—they had nothing 
to give. I very well know that a woman, essentially 
and of necessity, is a parasite, a vampire, a thief. I 
took her for what she is. I took her as she is made. 
_ I let myself be robbed, and I promptly paid my tribute 
without haggling or bargaining. 

In the final reckoning of joy and suffering we are 
quits. For pleasure received I rendered pleasure, for 
suffering inflicted I suffered in turn. For the rest I ask 
nothing; what is given is given. But so far as I know 
or see or remember they gave me nothing—just that: 
nothing; neither an idea, nor a bit of strength, nor yet 
an impetus toward those divine heights which my rest- 
less spirit has always sought to attain. 

Such things should not be expected of a woman? 
That may be! I am inclined to think so myself. But 
in that case I am justified in not dealing with her in 
these pages, since I am writing only of a man’s soul, 
and not of a whole man. 

Or was it my fault that I did not succeed in finding 
or recognizing the Beatrice who might have exalted me 
to heaven? ‘That is possible, very possible; and if it 
_ were true I would regret it more than all my sins, be- 
cause a wondrous marvel indeed must be this exalter 
of men already predestined to exaltation! 

But whether I did not meet her or, meeting her, 


156 ... THE FAILURE 


failed to understand her, she never descended from 
the heights to deify me; and so—well, I cannot say a 
word about her. 

There, my dear, my impatient lady, there you have 
in a very few words the reasons for my silence on a 
subject which so deeply interests you. I realize only 
too well that the considerations which prompt my 
silence may be more offensive than silence itself; but 
how can I help that? 

If I had been apt at lying or inventing, I might 
have passed this subject by, or else have contented 
you by inserting a spicy incident or two into this un- 
adorned narrative of the adventures of a soul. It is 
useless for me to try: I should not succeed. I cannot 
write what I do not feel, nor give a place to something 
that never had one. 

And yet I would not have you dislike me altogether 
—you and other women who may perchance be willing 
to hear my story. I am going to give you a sample, 
just a wee, tiny sample, of the sort of thing my senti- 
mental recollections might have been. It concerns a 
memory of mine that is very far away—the first mem- 
ory of love indeed that I can count in my life. 

An August night—long, long ago! We were walk- 
ing down the hill after one of the usual family dinners 
“beyond the gates.” I had succeeded in falling behind 
—with her, the littlest, youngest, saddest, most neg- 
lected of all—the one most like me. 

The white moon shining on the white dust of the 
roads, on the white houses, on the olive trees white 


AND NOT A WORD OF LOVE? 157 


_ behind freshly whitewashed walls, gave a strange 
almost theatrical dream-light to everything around us. 
I tried to keep to the shadows; and as we were 
about to step out into the light again, my hand, long 
hesitant, reached out for hers, and then dropped it at 
once, with the sense of having done something dirty, 
- something wrong. 

My heart was beating too hard for a child of my 
age. The insistent and pathetic song of the crickets, 
scattered about, lost probably in the fields there, 
almost made me weep. I imagined their little black 
heads and feelers just emerging from holes in the 
ground under grass already cold with the evening dew; 
and it occurred to me that their rhythmic monotonous 
song was a cry for love and happiness, ever and again 
repeated in vain. ~ 

From that moment I too needed a little happiness; 
that very evening I at last had the courage to speak 
to her of things I had been thinking for so many 
months. Bit by bit the secret of my tormented nights 
came out in broken, halting phrases, under the unfor- 
gettable whiteness of that August moon. She listened 
to me quietly, her face white and motionless under the 
broad brim of her hat. She listened to me as though 
she were in a dream; but every now and then she would 
say “‘yes,” “yes,” and “yes” again without adding an- 
other word. 

Deeply moved, I dressed up the details of my dreams 
as a diminutive philistine already mired in respectabil- 
ity: “As soon as we’re grown up we'll get married, you 


158 THE FAILURE 


and I. And we'll live in a little house all our own in 
the country, but not too far from town. We'll have 
an orchard and a garden not too small, with a great 
big bed of flowers, and in the middle of it, a pond for 
goldfish, and little yellow roses running over the iron 
gate. And the house will have a fine sitting-room, and 
in the sitting-room a clock with a shiny brass pendulum 
against the wall; and a round table with a red cloth; 
and the pictures of my father and mother and your 
father and mother in nice black frames lined with 
gold. And we'll have lots of pets: a fluffy white cat 
with a blue collar; pigeons in a house on the roof; 
three or four chickens for our eggs; a canary and a 
goldfinch in a cage—and we can hear them sing; and 
a big watchdog and, perhaps, a little monkey like the 
one the flower man keeps in the door of his shop on 
the corner. We’ll spend all our time loving each 
other—” 

And she: “Yes,” “yes,” nothing but “yes.” 

To her everything was natural, easy, simple. That 
we should spend all of our lives together, just we two, 
did not astonish her in the least. 

Our future life I pictured as a laborious conquest, a 
distant ideal for attainment, a continuous struggle— 
serious business, in a word. To her it was different. 
She thought of it as noise, chatter, play time, a new 
game invented by me—the game of matrimony—the 
game of life. It’s true she was a little pensive; but 
her pale face that had known but few caresses was 
unperturbed and serene. She did not understand me. 


AND NOT A WORD OF LOVE? 159 


We did not understand each other. “Yes!” ‘Yes!’ 
“She said ‘“‘yes” precisely because she didn’t understand. 
And my own dream! How could it ever have been so 
horribly petty, childish—so bourgeois! And I, I don’t 
know why, suddenly felt sadder than I would have had 
she answered “no.” So I dropped the subject and said 
nothing more to her. 

That was my first encounter with the soul of a 
woman. The others were very different; and yet— 

However; this is my last word on love in this story. 
The very, very last! Take a bit of advice from me, 
dear lady. Drop my book right here or throw it into 
the waste-basket. And despise me, despise me—with 
all your heart! 


- 






nakor niu ai 
eats 
1 


¢ 
ta’ ¥ 
Win Eh 
ity Fi 





Solenne 


‘Who has gone farthest? For I would go farther.” 
WALT WHITMAN. 


\y ‘ 
atl hi 


ye Ah 
. 








jhapter 22: My Mission 


WHEN, after three or four years of capricious and 
eckless activity, I had achieved what most people 
vould have deemed success (I had a name, [ was read, 
‘liscussed, followed, feared), I was more painfully con- 
cious than before of a shameful emptiness within me. 
What? Is that all? 

| Was that the ultimate objective of my days and 
ights of toil, the conclusion of my many-armed out- 
teachings for a light less earthly? Was this the only, 
the final result of all my youth, of all my ardor and 
enthusiasm, repressed and concentrated over long years 
only to flare up into a sudden burst of flame, and then 
die out like a fire of straw kindled on a mountain top? 

Was that all? Nothing but that? My name in 
print; my works quoted; my pictures in the maga- 
zines; my most cherished ideas made public property; 
my most intimate confessions, my most indiscreet en- 
thusiasms, tossed on the market for the amusement of 
anybodies? 

And then what? Monkeys around you repeating 
your every gesture; parrots around you repeating your 
every word; your name on the covers of books; your 
signature at the end of articles; your personality and 
character picked to pieces by people who do not un- 


derstand you, who despise you, who envy you, but do 
163 





164 ~ THE FAILURE 


not have the pluck to grind you under their heels! A 
famous author, even a quoted author; coddled by 
editors and publishers; pursued by reviewers and pub- 
licity agents; translated into foreign languages; a can- 
didate for an honest, respectable, middle-aged celeb- 
rity? 

And after that what? I was beginning to have all 
this and already to feel that it did not satisfy, that it 
would never satisfy me. What did I care about being, 
or becoming, a “brilliant” philosopher, a “writer well 
known in literary circles,” a more or less successful 
manufacturer and retailer of words and ideas? Where 
was I going to end? 

It wasn’t hard to answer that. Looking ahead with 
all the mad anticipation which may be pardoned in 
nobodies, I could see myself on the road toward suc- 
cess with a first-class publisher—even Treves; a chair 
in some University; membership in some Academy, and 
perhaps some day (when I get old, decrepit, doddering 
enough) an award of the Nobel prize! 

That? Not by a long shot! I felt that I had been 
born for something better than that, for higher aims 
than that. Mine was not ambition, it was not vanity: 
it was pride, but real honest pride, the pride of a 
Lucifer, the pride of a god! I wanted to be truly 
great, heroically great, epically great, immeasurably 
great. I wanted to accomplish something gigantic, un- 
heard of, tremendous, something that would change the 
face of the earth and the hearts of men. 

That or nothing! Otherwise—rot rather in the’ 


i). 
M! | 
MY MISSION 165 


‘yrainless idleness of a government sinecure, or turn 
‘€ast at manual labor, or—best of all—drown myself 
and my shattered dreams in the yellow water of the 
‘Arno! 

My old persistent ambition to be chief, leader, guide, 
center! Old and persistent, but especially persistent 
during those days of achievements and eager strivings! 
| I confess: what I wanted—the reasons for wanting 
it mattered little—was that all eyes should be on me, 
at least for a moment; and that all lips should be 
‘speaking my name. 

' Founder of a school, leader of a faction, prophet of 
a religion, discoverer of theories or of extraordinary in- 
‘tellects, captain of a party, redeemer of souls, author 
‘of a best seller, master of a salon—anything, no matter 
\what, so long as I was first, foremost, greatest, in Some- 
thing! 

' To give my name to an idea or to a group of men; 
‘to disclose a new, unexpected, incredible truth; to be 
tecognized, judged by people, to have my chapter in 
the histories or my paragraph in the encyclopedias; to 
‘have a field of my own, to stand for something that 
‘everybody must know! 

- No matter why, no matter how—but on no account 
‘should I be thrust aside, relegated to a second or a 
‘third row among interesting men, curious men, merely 
‘cultivated and intelligent. Something crazy, something 
foolish—never mind; so long as I was the lunatic of 
that lunacy, the fool of that folly! 

At first I took under consideration that form of 








166 THE FAILURE 


action which superficial thinkers regard as the mos: 
active of all: politics. Socialism was already on the 
decline; but at that time it was still the most power 
ful movement operating in my country; and JI, con. 
trary by nature, born to minorities, came out agains’ 
Socialism. 

However, I became a Socialist, a Socialist upsid 
down: I accepted the “class struggle.” A real struggle 
however, actual warfare, not just assault and battery 
_ practised by an emboldened and a hungry ruffian (th 
masses) upon an accommodating and chicken-heartec 
capitalism. The class struggle: the struggle of a clas: 
which has done things and which has won its powel 
against a class trying prematurely to overthrow it: de: 
fense of the bourgeoisie—a defense knowing no pity; 
the policy of the mailed fist,—and all that goes with 
it: expansionism (Nationalism, that is, armament, ar 
| army and a navy). I became editor-in-chief of the 
_ leading Nationalist paper in Italy. I made a speech 
outlining the platform for a new Nationalist party. 
Every week I rioted with Popularists; started some 
new debate; assailed some Socialistic glory; disem- 
boweled some revolutionary ideal—all to the end of 
restoring courage and dignity to a citizenry anxious 
only to surrender on easy terms. Italy was to regain 
her former greatness, even going in for wars of con- 
quest. We thought of Africa. We asked for battle- 
ships. We tried to rekindle such sparks of Italy’s ex- 
pansionistic spirit as had survived the cold water of 
Adowa. | 


MY MISSION 167 


» But I soon passed from this colonial and military 
nperialism to a spiritual nationalism. Italy seemed to 
4e a country without life, without unity of ideals, with- 
ut a common cause, stupefied, without red blood. 
ach for himself and graft for all! What was Italy’s 
usiness in this world, what was her mission, I asked 
inyself. I could find no answer. It was then that I 
egan, with Mazzini’s disregard of the proper mo- 
yent, an inopportune “Campaign for an Awakening 
'y Force.” Faint trumpet blasts (articles, pamphlets, 
‘pen letters) in a world thinking of something else! 1 
vanted my country to do something on her own ac- 
‘ount, play a distinctive individual réle among the 
ations. I wanted Italians to forget the rhetoric of a 







860 there had been no united Italian thought, no real 
‘entiment that was Italian. The time had come to be 
‘p and doing. A nation that is not moved by some 
Messianic passion is foredoomed to crumble. 

- What was this national goal to be? I was not so 
‘are myself. I cried out, I appealed to the many who 
ad rallied to my call. My message was this: We 
‘just make way for the dominion of Mind over Things. 
i Italy Mind has always been recognized; therefore 
he reign of Mind must begin with us! 

' But could Mind be a principle of national cohesion? 
soon discovered that it couldn’t. The problem of 
he absolute dominion of Will soon overstepped the 
aost fantastic patriotism. All men had to be con- 











| 


tésorgimento dead and buried, and start working outa | 
(reat national destiny, a glorious common cause. Since ~ 





168 THE FAILURE 


sidered. All men had to be worked for.. There coulc 
be no question of the material physical interests of 
an acre or two of the earth’s surface, but rather o! 
the spiritual interests of all humanity. 

I was convinced to the bottom of my soul that ] 
had a mission in the world—my own mission, a great 
mission. It seemed to me that I was called upon every 
day to do what others had left undone, to change men 
and things in the twinkling of an eye, to divert the 
peaceful course of history. 

Who had called me? I did not know, I do not know. 

I did not believe in God; and yet there were mo- 
ments when I felt like a Christ obligated at all hazards 
to promote a new redemption. I did not believe in 
Providence; and yet I saw myself as a future Messiah 
and Savior of mankind. Voices spoke within me—deep 
cavernous voices that seemed to rise from ‘a nether 
hemisphere, another earth. I imagined that already 
this life of ours was another life and this earth a 
heaven for people groaning below (not dead as yet 
down there, not born as yet up here); and I thought 
that they were calling on me to save them, lift them 
to my level, that they might share in our diviner joys, 
our more certain truths. At times I felt much as a 
god must feel when he hears a multitude praying at his 
feet for happiness and liberation, death and redemp- 
tion. At such moments I was moved as I never had 
been at a reading of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. 
Once I broke into tears over a simple, matter-of-fact 
account of the life of Mazzini. 


MY MISSION of 69 


I was mysteriously impelled to do something for 
mien—for all men. Somehow I felt as though I had 
given a promise and that the hour of fulfilment could 
| no longer be postponed. 

I had made myself; I must now make others. I 
‘had destroyed; I must now rebuild. I had despised 
reality; I must now renovate, purify it. I had hated 
‘men; I must now love them, sacrifice myself for them, 
make them like gods. 

' Otherwise, what was I born for? Why else had I 
! sternly denied the past? Either start at the beginning, 
Inake everything over, sublimate everything through a 
‘supreme effort of love and will, make reality habitable 
even for the most delicate and for the greatest souls, 
‘or else renounce everything—from the instinctive en- 
Joyments of a vegetative life to the satisfactions of 
‘being a semi-celebrity in Europe and America! Even 
‘in the field of action I was again confronted with the 
old dilemma of my boyhood: everything or nothing! 

' Knowledge alone no longer satisfied me now: I de- 
“manded action. Nor was writing quite enough: I had 
‘to impress my will upon things and upon people. I 
“wanted to get away from ceaseless thinking; from 
juggling with dead words and cold concepts; from 
“mental fireworks—systems set up and taken down day 
‘by day; from rockets of paradox; from pin-wheels of 
‘fancy. I was tired of observing, judging, commenting 
on what others were doing—tired of just criticizing and 
‘tearing down. The world of thoughts, words, and 
paper in which I was performing seemed arid, hope- 













x m Ps 
170 | THE FAILURE 


less, sterile to me now. The time had come to leave 
it for something vaster, more concrete, more construc- 
tive. ate 

Not, however, for the primitive animal life of every- 
body and anybody; not for “business”; not for the 
ordinary occupations of people; not for any action that 
was simply continuation and repetition; not for that 
struggle that is a struggle for bread, for house-rent, 
for money, for women, and for power over others. I 
wanted to act, but not on an ordinary human plane 
like anybody else. There was something far different 
to be done and no one was doing it. Live, yes, but not 
the usual placid monotonous life! Act, yes, but not 
with the old purposes in view! My passage across 
this planet must leave a deeper impression than any 
revolution, any earthquake. My desire was, in short, 
that with me, through my work, a new age in the his- 
tory of mankind should begin. A new era, an epoch 
wholly different from all other periods, a Third King- 
dom! 

Man, in the beginning, had been pure beast, an 
animal living a wholly vegetative physical life. From 
that plane he had risen to humanness: he had made 
tools, brought fire, the wind, other animals, to serve 
him. Little by little he had freed his mind from ex- 
clusive concern with self-preservation: he had enlight- 
ened and exalted himself in art. But human life was 
still encumbered with survivals, legacies from his brute 
condition: take off the gentleman’s tailor-made suit, 
deprive him of the mechanical appliances which he has 








MY MISSION 371 


: developed to perfection, and you get a very passable 
. barbarian. His common purposes and ideals have not 
_much changed from those of his brigand ancestors: 


good eating; possession of the most beautiful women; 


. bullying of the weak; stealing as much as possible from 


others not so weak. ‘The supreme and truly super- 
animal joys of thought for thought’s sake, of pure 
disinterested thought, the enjoyment, comprehension, 


_and creation of art, belong to a few, and to those few 


often for a few moments only. Humanity, therefore, 


is in a stage halfway, between brute and hero, between 
_ Caliban and Ariel, between the bestial and the divine. 
My task accordingly was to wrest it from that ambigu- 


ous position, free it from that contamination. All that 


“man retained of the infra-man must be killed, sup- 


pressed, extirpated, that he might stand forth in his 
glory as more than man, as superman, exalted to god- 


ship, incarnating true divinity, multitudinously alive 


in the Spirit and through the Spirit. 
What is the highest, purest, noblest part of man? 


_ The mind! Well, then, to act on man in a direction 


of improvement, you must act on his mind. Only along 
spiritual lines is a complete and radical evolution, a 
total transformation of all beings and all values, to be 
hoped for. Man can reach the heights only through 


_ his better self.. His present spiritual life already con- 


tains the seed, the beginnings, of the divine life that 


awaits him. The contemplation of the philosopher, the 
ecstasy of the mystic, the creation of the poet—all those 


} 


things which carry us away from the humiliating neces- 


» 


Tye." THE FAILURE 


sity of self-preservation, from the hideous whirl of 
earthly interests—are functions of the Spirit. And 
the Spirit is flexible, malleable, perfectible. It holds 
infinite promises and unhoped-for surprises in reserve, 
and gives evidence of containing the germs of other 
faculties still, the requisites for progress toward miracu- 
lous developments. If anything new and great is to 
come of man it will come of the Spirit; if we are 
going to perfect man, we must first perfect the Spirit. 
The Spirit encompasses all values, all the justifications 
of bodily life, all the motives of our acts. If the Spirit 
were suddenly to change, all life would change. If it 
were to seek different ends, if it abandoned some of its 
predilections and took up with others, human existence 
would be revolutionized and regenerated. All ques- 
tions, national, social, moral, are at bottom nothing but 
questions of Mind, spiritual questions. Transform the 
internal, and the external is transformed; renovate the 
Mind and the world is renovated. 

That the world needed such renovation I did not 
doubt. The life men were leading—slow, heavy, som- 
nolent, vulgar, physical, hellish—nauseated me more 
and more. I wished others to feel this nausea and find 
the strength to rise above it, reducing the importance 
of the life of the body, repudiating the traditional man- 
ner of living—a savage barbarous thing, ill disguised 
(in fact rendered actually more hideous) by steel and 
electricity. 

That man should mount at least one step higher was 
indispensable. A new volume of universal history 
must at last be opened. In the beginning man was 


MY MISSION 173 


i EE MR ee 


flesh; then he was flesh and spirit; now he must be 
all spirit, spirit alone. Following on the Age of Beasts 
‘and the Age of Men—the Age of Heroes, Gods, Angels! 
‘First the era of force, then the era of intelligence in 
the service of force; finally liberated Intelligence, Will 
Predominant, Mind the Master of all forces. 

_ To lead men toward this Kingdom, to herald the 
dawn of this new age, to bring this new epoch into be- 
ing, such was the duty which I voluntarily took upon 
myself. Mine was a double mission: to disgust men 
‘with their present mode of life and wean them from 
‘it; to prepare and exemplify the superhuman life which 
I presensed and ever dimly visualized with all the exas- 
‘perated tenseness of supreme desires. 

And how should I set about this? Was I worthy of 
assuming such a task? Would I succeed in it? Was 
I myself so permeated with the Spirit, so dominated by 
the Spirit, that I had the right to preach to others and 
to impose on others a life less entangled with ugliness 
and evil? 

And though my mind were clean, virtuous, without 
stain or weakness, would I have an intellect sturdy 
enough and resourceful enough to inspire in others the 
will to break—as it would be necessary to break—with 
their thoughtless hand-to-mouth existence, to encom- 
pass the elevation of hundreds of nations to the sphere 
of the Divine? 

To begin on my mission I had first to be sure of 
myself. I had to purify myself and make myself a 
greater man, attain moral perfection and intellectual 
sublimity, make myself a saint and a genius! 


; 


—_—_F 


Chapter 23: Perfect! ™ , 


Wuat? Is there not one among you who has the cour- 
age to come to my house, meet me face to face, and 
tell me frankly, pitilessly, without sugaring the pill, 
just what I am? Is there not one among you who 
will tell me baldly, in true friendship, what I have 
done that is wrong, what I have left undone that I 
should have done, my defects, my vices, my crimes? 
Are you all cowards and hypocrites—fussy, harmless 
old ladies of fifty? You’re afraid I don’t mean it? 
You think Ill take offense at what you say, that in- 
stead of throwing my arms about you and thanking 
you I’ll break your heads and put you out of doors? 

Out with it, gentlemen, in God’s name! Have you 
never seen the face of an honest man who dares speak 
the truth? From the bottom of my heart, from the 
depths of my soul’s misery I appeal to you, I entreat 
you! I must know! I need to know what wrong I 
have done that I may repent of it and pay the penalty. 
I must know, at all costs, what my faults are that I 
may uproot them, burn them, be rid of them. Don’t 
you see? Don’t you understand what it is that is tor- 
menting me, eating my heart out, day and night? 

I want to become a great soul, a great man, pure, 
noble, perfect. .I know that I have this one life to live 
and I intend to live it well.. The lives you people lead 

rg Rell 


PERFECT! T> 175 


disgust me. I intend either to be great or to kill my- 
‘self! There is no other choice for a man such as I. 
I need to be above you that I may raise you higher than 
you are. But to become great I must harrow, and 
torment, and polish, and magnify the soul that has 
been given me (I know not by whom) for the few years 
Tam to spend as a visitor, as an exile, on this earth. 
But before you can make a soul great, you must know 
wherein it is small; to make it clean you must see 
wherein it is dirty; to make it courageous and strong 
you must drag all its fears and shrinkings out into the 
light of day. 

- Do you think I have not been looking at myself 
enough? Do you imagine J have not spied warily, 
‘cunningly, relentlessly, on all the motives, second 
‘thoughts, afterthoughts, evasions, self-deceptions, im- 
pulses, tremors, of my heart? 

And yet—lift your eyebrows if you will, call me a 
liar if you will—I have found NOTHING! Under- 
stand? Nothing! I have found nothing that disgusts 
me or that fills me with shame. In all these years I 
have not been able to find one single defect that was 
surely a defect, one single vice that was unquestionably 
a vice. Never have I been able to stop on the verge 
of an act of mine and say: “This is a vile thing to 
do!” Not even once have I felt a twinge of remorse 
at something I had failed in doing or at something 
contrary to the laws of men or of God that I had done. 

But tell me the truth for once at least. Tell me—lL 
beg you in the name of all you hold most dear—was 


176 a THE FAILURE 


there ever a man in my condition? Is it possible? 
Am I a saint without sin? Am I the one virtuous man, 
the one spotless soul, the one perfect human being? 

Is it possible? Don’t believe it for a minute! It is 
impossible, the most impossible of all impossibilities! 
Certainly! I too must be bad, dirty, cowardly, weak, 
untruthful, heartless, a bluff, a sham! I too must 
be sinning seventy times seven times a day, with a soul 
as black and stinking as a cesspool. Otherwise—well, 
I would not be a man. Otherwise—why should I feel 
forever surging up in every part of me this enormous 
desire I have to be a great soul, a beautiful soul? 

No, my friends, it is useless to wheedle me with little 
words of flattery whispered in my ear. I do not be- 
lieve you, I will never believe you. I may be pure 
in your eyes. You could call anything pure for all the 
morals you have, morals of beggars and traitors, morals 
of idlers trying to excuse your laziness—of hogs dressed 
up as men! But not in my eyes! Not in my eyes am 
I pure and great! Nor in thine eyes, O incomparable 
Ideal of my life, am I as I would be, as I must be, 
to approach death with firm step and head high! 

The fact is . . . the fact is that no one can know 
himself—no one can see severely enough, nor tell 
frankly enough, what he really feels, and thinks, and 
does. Pride is a shrewd deceiver. Vanity is a sly 
minx. Self-interest is a cool calculator. Shame will 
never face the music. Self-respect is a ready liar! 
And they are always on hand to hide, to soften, to 
attenuate, to excuse, to justify. That must be why I 


PERFECT! ora 


‘cannot recognize the rot that is in me. That must be 
why I see myself as the white swan of perfection! 

So now you understand! Now you see why I need 

you and cannot do without your uttermost severity. 
It takes others to see what is bad in a man: the spite 
native to human beings has sharp eyes and a ready 
mind. Nothing escapes its accursed vigilance. What 
it does not see it guesses, and what it cannot guess it 
invents. Men have always been quick at finding the 
mote in their neighbor’s eyes. 
_ You can’t imagine what I’m talking about? Excuse 
me! This is not the time for side-stepping nor for com- 
pliments. You see right into me! And probably you 
are disgusted with what you see—you experts in holy 
horror! But is there not ove among you who will talk 
to me, not one, not even one, who will come and tell 
me everything? I assure you: I am not like other 
people. I vomit at praise. I despise adulation. I 
cannot endure euphemisms and evasions. 

Perhaps you are afraid? The first man who calls my 
attention to a fault I shall think of as my savior, my 
dearest friend, my real brother. 

Perhaps my case is too hopeless! Perhaps you think 
you would not have time or patience to tell the whole 
story? Please, make the sacrifice! I will pay you 
for your trouble as best I can. I will give you all I 
possess: I will steal and give you the proceeds. I will 
crawl on my belly into your houses to serve and wor- 
ship you. 

You can’t see anything wrong? Then you are blind 


\ | 
178 «= THE FAILURE 


and stupid, because if the evil is there, you—out- 
siders—should detect it at a glance. Put on your 
glasses! Stir up that spite of yours (you have plenty 
of it)! Follow me around! Catch me off my guard! 
Anything you like—provided only you denounce me, 
accuse me, without mercy! My life or my death, my 
greatness or my abjectness, lie in your hands. 

What are you muttering there among yourselves? 
Ah, of course! That is your way! You talk only be- 
hind people’s backs! You flay them in secret! You 
slander them under your breath!’ You point them out 
when they are not looking! But that won’t do—in 
my case! Come out in the open! Step out into the 
light! Speak so you can be heard! I am not 
ashamed! I will not run away! I want to be accused, 
defamed, that I may rise to a certain place I have 
my eye on! 

Oh, I see. . . . Perhaps—no offense, I assure you! 
—perhaps you refuse to show me my defects because 
you prefer to keep me from being better than you, from 
attaining that perfection which I am looking for! In 
that case.) : 

I appeal to you, men, all men, friends and enemies 
alike; have mercy on me, a poor lost soul athirst for 
greatness! Do not withhold from me the bitter cup 
of condemnation! Speak without reserve; arraign me 
ruthlessly! Do not stop if my eyes fill with tears! 
Do not lose courage if my face grows pale! I shall 
kill myself if you do not point out my sins and short- 


PERFECT! 179 


Lomings to me, if you do not tell me at once how 
\lespicable and vile I am! On my knees I beseech you, 
ll men of the earth: have the courage for once to tell 
‘he truth, the whole truth, the naked truth!, 












Chapter 24: A Man of Genius! 


PEOPLE all around keep telling me that I am a genius, 
and they, good souls, think they are doing me a great 
honor and giving me a great pleasure in so saying. A 
few even say that I am a great genius, and these are 
the men who think they are my best friends and. stand 
closest to me. 

I tip my hat to you, kind people, and may God re- 
ward you for your kindness! You are saying and 
doing all you can say and do; you are even able, for 
a moment, to swallow your own vanity and overlook 
my ill-mannered ways. 

Is there not one among you who knows how much 
and how bitterly you hurt me with this talk of genius 
(ingegno)? j 

To the devil with all your genius! What are you 
talking about? Do you really think I can rest content 
with being a “man of genius,” a “boy of promise” 
(promising and promising till the undertaker gets 
him! ), an amusing chap, witty, and interesting? What, 
if you please, do you take me for? Have I the insipid, 
good-natured face of the man who is satisfied if he has 
what others have, who is happy if there are ten ideas 
on his tongue and a hundred francs in his pocketbook? 
Have you never noticed, you ravens of ill omen, that 
brains are the cheapest and commonest commodity on 


sale in the public market? And especially here in 
180 


Sooke 


A MAN OF GENIUS! _ 181 









Italy, as everybody knows! Tell me, if you can; who, 
jn this land blessed of the gods, is without “genius”? 
'Find me such a man, and I’ll give you his weight in 
‘gold! Brains, donkeys mine, run in every Italian 
‘street, flood every Italian house, overflow from every 
‘Italian book, spout from every Italian mouth. Brains 
‘make up the muck that oozes in every Italian cellar. 

_ “A lad of genius! Too bad he doesn’t do any- 
thing!” 

“See that fellow there? A scoundrel, a cheat, but, 
I will tell you, a man of genius!” 

_ “Yes, I agree with you! He does talk a lot of non- 
sense! But you can’t deny it: he is a ‘man of 
‘genius.’ ” 

Such are the remarks one hears every day in Italy; 

ion the sidewalks, in people’s houses, in the restaurants, 
‘wherever the so-called intellectuals congregate. 
*% Genius! Any one who can write a verse, or rhyme 
a song, with an agreeable cadence here and there and 
‘a passable rhythm, is a “man of genius.”” If you paint 
a few flowers in water color (and make them look 
real!) you are a “man of genius”! If you can do a 
‘piece on the piano, in front of a bust of Beethoven, 
‘you are a “man of genius.” If you can describe the 
ravages of an earthquake with a certain elegant senti- 
mentality you are a “man of genius.” Designers of 
ice-cream cones are “men of genius,” as well as dilet- 
tanti “of the future,” who talk about what others do, 
shooting streams of ideas and streams of smoke in 
parallel lines toward the ceiling.» 





182 = THE FAILURE 


I ask you again: who among us is without “genius”? 
Even those who do nothing at all are “men of th) 
even our politicians, even our journalists .. . 

Let me say it therefore once and for all: to tell me 
I am a genius is to iasult me. To tell me that I am 
a genius is to give me not a pleasure but a pain. 

I have no use for your genius. I put it with my 
waste paper and send it to the back-house. ‘Frankly 
speaking I consider your “genius” merely as the uppet 
grade of mediocrity. Your genius is that higher form 
of intelligence which every one can understand, appre- 
ciate and love. Genius is that salted and peppered 
mixture of facility, wit, and information, of decorated 
commonplace, of exhilarated philistinism, which is so 
palatable to ladies, schoolmasters, lawyers, celebrities, 
and men of the world, in fact, to all the betwixts and 
betweens—people neither in heaven nor in hell, equi- 
distant from downright imbecility and from real genius, 

Let them be, these men of genius! May they be 
successful, enjoy themselves, have a good time in life, 
and amuse people! I am not one of oe nor do : 
care to be. 

“Nothing but extremes ever satisfy me. F Whigs living 
beings are concerned I like only perfect animals, or 
perfect vegetables, such as do their work honestly, 
knowing nothing else, without flitting about here and 
there in a stew of chatter and ambition—or else real 
geniuses, great minds, heroes, solitary, gigantic as a 
mountain at night! 

A peasant or a Dante!—away with all who are in 


A MAN OF GENIUS! “183 


jetween; get out from under my feet, you men of 
vehius, you men of talent, you men of ability, you 
lever, witty, skilful, loathsome intellectuals! What 
ure you in comparison with the grimy toiler who grinds 
he grain that gives you bread; or in comparison with 
he poet who squeezes from his soul words that make 
4 thousand generations think and shudder? What do 
you produce? Words and words! Playthings, toys— 
luff! 

' My choice is already made. Even though I wished 
‘0, I could not be a tree or a laborer; but I do want, 
. do will desperately, to be a really great man.* Let 
ne say it in a word that should strike terror to the 
heart: I want to be a genius! Not ingegno, mere 
talent, but genio, a real genius! ~ | 
| If I fall by the roadside without achieving my de- 
‘ire, I will accept my sad destiny and weep where none 
san see. I will crawl into some little corner of the 
world to die alone, like the brave wolf of De Vigny! 
But I will not be prostituting myself among those I 
jave despised. 

*I will repent of nothing.” I am sure I will experience 
uch joys even though I do not succeed—the joys 
of feeling my soul clean and set toward something as 
‘sublime as it is absurd—that I shall not even notice 
the stones I trip over on the road, nor hear the 
‘aughter of the man who is “cultivating his garden” 
‘and thinks it a world. 

_ Be not downcast, O my soul courageous, if many a 
time you seem stupid and ignorant. ‘Genius is not 













184 THE FAILURE 


what they call “brilliant.” It does not pass pretty 
ideas around like plates of tea and toast. It does not 
keep up with the latest magazines and the best selling 
books. Quite the contrary! 

The genius is a child, and mad. The genius is a 
genius because he has the courage to be a lunatic and 
a child. He cannot help seeming ignorant and idiotic 
at times; for he wonders at many simple things and 
talks often without common sense. 

But only to the genius, O soul of mine, do those 
marvelous hours come when God himself seems to be 
speaking through your mouth, when all is light, when 
everything stands revealed, limpid, and harmonious as 
the water of a beautiful stream—hours when the soul 
is like fire, like air, like love—hours when, through 
some mysterious madness, everything is possible and 
everything is sacred, and you cannot tell which is soul 
—your soul—and which is world. 

Ho, you people! Don’t you see what a dull and 
insipid trifle your genius is as compared with such 
moments of real genius? To have one such hour I 
would give all the genius you credit to me and all the 
genius of all the buffoons in the world! 

And even then I should probably feel that I had 
stolen it! | 






Chapter 25: Dies Irae- 


DESPERATE cries these, shouted in the void, addressed 
‘to others, but uttered to myself! Struggles, self-morti- 
fications, writhings of remorse! Sublime resolves 
fizzling out in three thousand words for a newspaper! 
Fevers of purity at once forgotten in the white arms 
of awoman! Assaults on heights sublime; stormings 
of embattled heavens; thirst for dangerous adventure 
and the “grand emprise”; leaps of a man out toward 
‘another life, a life beyond life; dethronings of gods; 
‘fulfilments of the serpent’s promise; real redemption, 
without a cross and without red blood dripping from 
‘white hands of benediction! Unceasing, maddening, 
uncontrollable dreams of miracles! And meantime— 
a small, petty, pious, daily life, in a small room, in a 
cheap café, in a small city, among very small people! 

| And yet I struggled. I fought bravely, valiantly, my 
heart filled with all hope, my mind with all good-will. 
I had pledged my whole being: Be this! Do that! 
Else—disappear! “I struggled against the temptations 
enticing me towards a bread-winning mediocrity’ I 
strove to create around me a ruthless solitude of spirit 
if not of body. I fought myself. I punished myself. 
Tinured myself to pain for the terrible trials that were 
to come. I felt the need of concentrating utterly in 


my inner, my innermost Self, of withdrawing into a 
185 





186 THE FAILURE 


silence where I could hear my own voice and nothing 
else. I was to be the first man of the new human- 
ity—I was to set the first example of a wholly spiritual 
life, a life independent of body, of matter, of animal- 
ness. 

The goal I had set for myself was, I soon discovered, 
still remote; and I was not as yet that spirit without 
blemish or weakness, which was predestined to show 
men the road to the life beyond. But I was not dis- 
couraged on that account. The enthusiasm born of the 
very absurdity of my undertaking; the bold aspiration 
that made the grandest dreams of men seem small; thé 
mad certainty I felt of future success; the titanic pride 
which filled me at the thought that I was the instru- 
ment chosen to carry out a mission so unusual and so 
marvelous as I pictured it; the absolute necessity of 
my breaking away from this reality, this world, this 
humanity—all added day by day to my blindness, as 
I rushed headlong toward the most horrible awaken- 
ing that could await a mortal man. I seemed to be 
striding across the earth like an invisible giant, step- 
ping from mountain peak to mountain peak, leaping 
the green seas—so vast and lonely—like so many pud- 
dles, my head among the stars of heaven, warming 
myself at the fire of the sun as the wanderer does at a 
camp-fire of burning twigs. 

The most incredible, the most lurid visions iowa 
through my mind during those days, the wilder rushing 
in to replace the less wild in a crescendo of mad 
paroxysms even more intense. 


DIES IRAE 187 


. But the fixed underlying thought was always one 
‘and the same: to make possible, desirable, imminent 
‘the palingenesis of man, the transfiguration of the 
beast-man, the universal advent of the god-man. But 
first of all, others must begin to feel what I was feel- 
ing. They too must be filled with contempt, horror, 
‘terror, shame, for the ambiguous amphibious lives they 
and I were leading. 

And then I thought of art. 

Art alone could perform the miracle. Poetry alone 
ould sharpen that disgust for the pettiness in our lives, 
‘which is so frequently dulled by habit. Poetry alone 
‘could rearouse terror, rekindle remorse, reawaken the 
sense of shame, and create the pain of the unbearable 
in souls comfortably settled in pleasant compromise. 
(Thinking, theory, could not do it. Thinking convinces 
‘only a few; it is an actual bore to the majority; but 
art, living art, poetry, the poetry that grips you, sub- 
dues you (poetic poetry, that is, with all its color and 
‘harmony and irresistible directness)—they could do 
it—they could force men to see themselves mirrored 
‘in the dead sea of human existence, and to shrink from 
‘their ugliness in horror, in a sudden desire to escape 
from it, to be different. For Narcissus the sight of his 
‘own image reflected in a flower-framed pool meant 
death; for humanity the same experience would be the 
beginning of a new life. 

' At that time poetry could not be for me (in my 
prevailing state of mind) anything miniature, episodic, 
limited. I was living in an atmosphere of greatness, 










188 THE FAILURE 


thinking great things. Even poetry, though a first 
rough instrument of redemption and nothing more, had 
to be great, very great, as great as possible. Great at 
least in conception—great as canvas, as picture: a Cos- 
mic poem, a universal drama, a vast scene. Looking 
back over my readings I could think of but two books 
worthy of attention in the sense I meant: the “Divine 
Comedy” and “Faust”—both of them gigantic bird’s- 
eye views of life and history, of the Now and of the 
Hereafter. In Dante, the world below and the world 
above, for judgment on the world we live in; in Goethe, 
the world of myth and speculation, for judgment on the 
world of reality. Sorrow and Love; the Above and 
the Below; Saints and Mothers; and a whirlwind 
sweeping along between heaven and earth, with a 
mortal sinner groping for Salvation. 

But neither the book of the Prior of Florence nor 
the book of the Counselor of Frankfurt was what 
I wanted. The two legends—the legend of eternal 
life and the legend of eternal youth—were not subjects 
vast enough to embrace the whole life of all men in 
all its aspects and phases. Something more was 
needed, something greater, much greater! In Chris- 
tianity I found another myth better suited to my pur- 
poses: The Day of Judgment. So I outlined, in my 
mind and on paper as well, the one tragedy in tune 
with my madness: the Dies Irae, the day of wrath, 
the day of fear, the day of the gnashing of teeth, the 
day of last judgment—judgment on the first man and 
on the last man! 


DIES IRAE 189 


The sun had grown as white as the moon in a sky 
that seemed vaster and blacker than ever; and the 
earth was shriveled and shrunken like a piece of fruit 
left forgotten on its tree. And men had taken refuge 
. in caves and catacombs under the earth, where they 
i lived closer to their dead, huddled together like sheep 
‘at the approach of winter. Spring came again and 
_ brought no flowers. The last nightingale died in its 
lonely nest. The oxen, weary of their zon-long toil, 
‘were naught but white bones stretched out in repose 
_on unplowed fields. The deserted cities of stone, of 
! marble, of steel, were crumbling bit by bit in the dark- 
_ ness, the silence, and the solitude. 

' One man only refused to give up hope of Heaven. 
‘His brothers all had long since renounced the super- 
stition which came out of Palestine and took its name 
'from the Christ. He alone believed. He alone, the 
last of the Christians, stood on a hilltop waiting for 
_ those signs which, as all Scripture had promised, would 
- portend the Great Ending. And, behold, his faith con- 
' quered! The Revelation of John came true before 
' tired eyes that had sleeplessly watched so long. Black 
horses galloped across the devastated earth. The seas 

hurled their waters toward the sky and waves beat on 
' the mountain tops. The heavens opened at last and 
myriads of flaming darts came raining through the 
' wounds in the black vault, burying the lands that had 
escaped the flood in a deluge of fire. Then, when the 
signs seemed certain, the last of the Christians went 

down into the caverns beneath the earth and called to 





190 THE FAILURE 


his brothers: “‘The end has come! ‘The dread day has 
broken! David and the Sybil prophesied not in vain! 
We must prepare ourselves! The Day of Judgment is 
at hand! The day of wrath is upon us!” 

But the men did not wish to die. They could not 
believe in death, in an end, in a Judgment. The Chris- 
tian’s voice rang out. They tried not to hear him, but 
his words troubled every heart. Then some remem- 
bered that this man’s God had died on a cross. So in 
mockery of his belief he too was crucified—that his 
voice might be stilled. As the nails pierced his hands 
and his blood ran down in thick drops and his nude 
torso writhed in agony, he once again foretold the ap- 
proaching End, the imminent, inevitable End. When 
Death had sealed his lips all men felt free and happy. 
They threw themselves into an orgy of joy down there 
in the caverns under the earth; and the last day of 
the world was like a hell of wicked indulgences. But 
soon great abysses yawned under their feet; mountains 
were torn asunder with the noise of a thousand thun- 
ders; the vaults of the caves fell in; and all the earth 
was a pit of the dead, a vast charnel in which there 
was no living soul. 

Silence reigned. 

There were hours (or centuries?) of silence-—as it 
was in the beginning. The great spherical sepulcher 
whirled along its orbit in Nothingness, with all the 
peacefulness of its graves. All voices were silent; all 
problems were solved; all burdens were lifted; and the 
dead could rest in peace at last; for there was no one 


DIES IRAE I9I 


_ living to disturb them, no one living to remember them, 
or to miss them, or to weep for them. 

But then, of a sudden—a blast of trumpets—the 
terrible trumpets of the Resurrection! Trumpets, 
sharp and shrill, magic trumpets, trumpets never con- 
ceived by man! ‘Trumpets of a blast so mighty, so 
_ piercing, so thunderous, so commanding, that the dead 
~ awakened—even the dead who had slept for a thou- 

sand, for ten thousand years. Heavenly trumpets, 
sounded by lips unknown, as potent as the gentlest 
word of Christ; so moving, so quickening, that at their 
sound the dead deep buried under earth and sea were 
stirred, so untiring, so insistent, that flesh was formed 
again about the skeletons of the dead, and life, breath, 
and motion, returned to them. A limitless army of 
Resurrected Dead! 

Lo the Valley of Jehoshaphat, large as the world, 
stretching from ocean to ocean, and covered, filled, 
overflowing, with all that risen humanity, those men, 
those women, those children, of all ages, of all coun- 
tries, of all colors, of all eras, brothers born on the 
same planet, meeting for the first time. And they 
cried out in fear and trembling: they were waiting! 

Most of them did not know why they were there; 
so they asked and could not understand each other. 

Some stood apart by themselves, weeping. Some hid 

their faces that they might not see. Some found them- 
selves again, recognized who they were, and remem- 
bered—and their fellows too. They conversed at last, 
the first trwe conversations among men. 


192 THE FAILURE 


The things we dream of now came true. Cesar 
could speak with Alexander; Dante embraced Virgil; 
Charles the Fifth put questions to Solomon. Soldiers 
met soldiers; kings met kings; fair women were with 
their lost lovers again. Peasants who were born and 
died alone on the mountains gathered in groups and 
made signs—the sign of the cross—to each other. 

At last they all knew why they had been awakened 
and what was in store for them. The true Christians 
exulted. The hour had come when they should see 
Christ, their Christ, descend from the clouds to punish 
and reward. Here and there people had already begun 
to pray, to excuse themselves, to beg for mercy, to 
plead in desperation for final forgiveness. There were. 
some who still found courage to menace the absent 
gods. A few held that this posthumous awakening was 
one last taunt of Destiny before real annihilation. 
Others suggested that houses be built and a govern- 
ment formed. Men and women couid be seen on the 
ground, their arms wrapped about each other in em- 
braces that would let them forget their terror. | 

They did not understand each other. No one under- 
stood what he himself was saying. Every second some 
voice would be raised in an effort to make itself heard; 
and a thousand other voices would answer. Soon the 
tumult was so unbearable that they all were obliged 
to join in. Prophets were still trying to ply their trade. 
One went up to a hilltop and began to exhort excitedly 
without once stopping for breath, though no one paid 
the slightest attention to what he was saying. 


' DIES IRAE 193 


Finally they were all worn out. The judgment did 

not begin. They waited there in silence, long hours, 
long days, maybe years. And still no one came. Then 
they all cried in unison: 

“Christ!” ‘“Curist!” “CHRIST!” 

The united voices of all humanity, of every human 
being who had lived on earth, loving, suffering, hoping, 
“rose as a challenge toward heaven. Judgment! Judg- 

ment! They demanded judgment! The horrors of 

uncertainty were more terrible than the horrors of Hell 
itself. 

A poor man told of the life of the poor and asked 
to be allowed to die again; a king told of the lives of 
kings; a poet of the lives of poets; a laborer of the 

_ lives of laborers; a prostitute of the lives of prosti- 
tutes; a sailor of the lives of sailors. Chinese peasants, 
Egyptian slaves, Indian warriors from America, legion- 
aries of Rome, miners of England, each told of the 
hard lives they had lived. And they all asked for 
mercy: they all asked to die again. 

Who among them had been happy? Who among 
them had been sinful? Life had never given them 
what they asked! And the greater part of them had 
lived ever in the dark: God had spoken only to the 
elect! Who had made them as they were? And what 
was this joke of a Resurrection? Was it to lead to a 
better and more beautiful life? If not, death were 
better, ah, yes, far better! 

After this great cry from billions of unfortunate 
souls, a great silence fell. Even the Christians wavered 


194. THE FAILURE 


at last. Why did not Christ appear in His glory, in 
the midst of the heavens, seated on a throne of fire, 
surrounded by angels and saints, as in the pictures 
painted by the monks of old? 

But at last a voice was heard calling above the 
silent multitude; and the voice said: “Christ is not in 
heaven. Christ is among you, humble and alone. He 
too was a man. He too is awaiting judgment. Let 
men be the judges of men and to each be given the 
destiny which he believed in. Those who believed in 
Paradise will be blessed in Paradise; and those who 
believed in death shall return to ashes and dust.” 

And men once more fell asleep—this time forever. 

There was a great deal more that I cannot remember 
to-day! But how ridiculous it all seems now—this 
imperfect outline of a tragedy that would have been 
the first wholly tragic tragedy ever written! ‘Faust’? 
“Faust” was nothing compared to mine! Imagine! A 
thousand dialogues! A hundred thousand scenes—all 
of life, with all its characters, through all the ages. 
The history of the universe in dramatic form! The 
Comedy Divine and the Tragedy Infernal brought to 
completion and enlarged to the impossible! 

I dreamed of seeing my drama performed on a stage 
as big as the Sahara, with real mountains for scenery. 
The words were to have the tremendous force of 
Dante’s. The actors would be heroic figures like the 
statues of Michelangelo. The music would have a 
grander sweep than the music of Wagner. The wind 
would be the breath behind my voice; the sea, my 


DIES IRAE 195 


orchestra; my chorus, the assembled races of the earth, 
and my language, something new, formidable, mighty, 
perfect, clear, made up of all the sounds known to 
the world, from the crooning of a baby to the thunder 
of a waterfall. The groans and sobs would shake the 
firmament; the shouts would be the shouts of nations 
calling from their knees; and my silences, real silence, 
the Silence that is never attained by man! And all 
men would tremble at reading, or seeing, or listening 
to my poem. And in that final scene, so powerfully 
imagined, they would recognize their whole life, with 
all its good and all its evil: a life that runs on without 
a resurrection to the day of wrath when all would be 
brought to judgment—but a judgment by men under 
a heaven empty of gods! And in the terror occasioned 
then by my monstrous drama men would feel the need 
of a new kind of life—the life promised by me! 


Chapter 26: Action? & 


\ Puttosopuy! Desire and hope for the certain knowl- 
edge that brings peace; sacred gateway to inaccessible 
truths; philter of ascetic enthusiasms in the empty 
Thebaids of systems; Dionysiac substitute for the nor- 
mal empirical experience of things, for physical joys, _ 
for amusements (consolations? ) to be bought for cash! / 

Philosophy! Friend of my childhood; love of my 
boyhood; passion of my youth! Faith without Scrip- 
tures; worship without ceremonies; communion with- 
out prayer—yet nearer and dearer to my heart than all 
religions! Abstract thought, as plain and unadorned 
as the masterpieces of the Primitives; pure idea, more 
harmonious, more perfect than any creature; pure con- 
cept, as unilinear as the line that makes a first design 
on the unsoiled canvas of Being! 

Philosophy! Magic worlds peopled with phantoms 
more alive than living men; with shadows more satis- 
fying than substances; with words more solid than 
things, and formulas more stirring than strophes of 
poetry! ; 

I knew thee, I loved thee, I raped thee! Thou wert 
a bounteous table spread before me in my season of 
fasting. Thou wert a consuming fever in my excess of 
health. Thou didst sing an unforgettable song in the 


desert of my heart! 
196 


ACTION? _ 197 


en ecelail 


Brain, brain, all brain! Theories, principles, dia- 
Jectics—abstractions, nothing but abstractions! Sys- 
tems were the food I lived on. Systems were the life 
I lived. Metaphysics was the bread I ate. Meta- 
physics was the dreams I dreamed! ‘ 

My Eden was a tanglewood of thorny ideologies, in 
which not a leaf was green! ‘The dazzling sun of 
celestial unity beat upon my head, already hot with 
congested blood and congested reasoning, with a light 

that hurt my blinded eyes and closed them with the 
violence of its splendor. In that wilderness of dead 
wood and brambles I, like the anchorites of old, came 
to know the fleshly torments of sensual worldly beau- 
ties. Women looked steadily at me with their large, 
black, wide-open eyes. On sunny seashores the golden 
‘oranges of Goethe swayed, dangling to and fro in 
breezes heavy with salt and Infinitude. And for long 
years (many, many years, many, many months, many, 
many days—and nights!) I was faithful unto thee, as 
faithful as a paladin to his emperor. I had no other 
God before thee. I sought thee out in all books; I 
revered thee in all forms; I saw thee in all words; I 
conquered thee as my possession in the great; I be- 
came thy defender in the small. At each discovery my 
spirit rejoiced in triumph; for each advance upon the 
stronghold of truth I wrestled, I struggled, body to 
body, hand to hand. For every sudden burst of light, 
long nights of delirious thinking! 

\ To thee, Philosophy, I owe my all: my longing for 
purified worlds; my ecstatic flights into the realms of 


198 THE FAILURE 


understanding; my adeptness in annihilations; my feel- 
ing of superiority over the man in the street.“ I be- 
longed wholly to thee, and for me thou wert every- 
thing! 

And yet a moment came when I saw thee as thou 
wert: a labored aureole of mystic hen’s tracks scrawled 
around a zero; a vain and changing order imposed 
upon an unorderable ever-evasive flux; an ironical mad- 
cap race toward thine own destruction! / 

And I renounced thee, I reviled thee, I cast thee off 
—I was false unto thee! Thou wert a stone in my 
pathway of attainment! Thy promises thou didst not 
keep with me, or—when thou didst honor them they 
availed me not! I willed to act, to do, to change—to 
transform the reality of to-day into the reality of to- 
morrow. But thou gavest me only futile contempla- 
tion, the immobility of the absolute, the wearying ex- 
citement of impatient dashes upon a goal ever receding 
before me! 

Philosophy had been knowledge (contemplation) 
and a seeking for the universal (unity). 

Instead, I wanted action (change, creation), and 
therefore reality (immediate concrete reality: the par- 
ticular). I reversed the age-old conception of philoso- 
phy from All to Nothing. I broke with tradition and 
went back to “prephilosophy.” In so doing I thought 
I was benefiting the philosophy of the philosophers. 
Every problem I came to regard as a problem of in- 
struments—of the transformation of instruments. 
Philosophers had tried only to find new solutions to 


ACTION? 199 


old problems; but all solutions, past and present, had 
been developed from the same premises, following 
the same laws, succumbing to the same fallacies— 
the products, in fact, of very similar mental proc- 
esses. 

It was useless to go any farther along those well- 
worn paths. An experience repeated over centuries 
and centuries gave ample warning—in the poverty and 
insignificance of its results—that nothing more could 
be done or hoped for in those directions. Improved 
terminologies, revamped methods, partial repairs to the 
machinery of logic—these were pitiable makeshifts of 
people unable to strike out courageously for them- 
selves from the King’s Highways of their fathers. If 
new conquests were to be made, in order to hope 
justifiably for arriving at any certain truth, to obtain 
results truly and radically different from the usual ones, 
it would be necessary to choose the hard but only pos- 
sible alternative of making a fresh start from a different 
angle. Philosophy is a structure built with tools. The 
tools which philosophy must use are the brains of 
philosophers. A better output can be had only from 
better tools. Therefore, to improve philosophy the 
brains of philosophers must be improved. It is a ques- 
tion of reforming souls. 

That is to say: we must do something, we must act, 
we must alter—and not rest content with just knowing, 
thinking, describing. 

Philosophers (and not all of them either—only a 
very, very few) have so far thought of changing only 


pe THE FAILURE 


one of their tools: language. They have not thought 
of the most important tool of all: the soul. 

« The same principle could be applied to ethics. Why 
multiply the norms, rules, commandments, impera- 
tives, already existing, if men snapped their fingers at 
ethical systems hashed and rehashed for them ad 
nauseam, continuing to be the rascals they had always 
been, a little less cruel perhaps, but certainly more 
hypocritical? Find a way to change tastes, desires, 
the inner values of the mind, and virtuous conduct 
will result normally, naturally, without need of ser- 
mons, exhortations, laws. Go to the root of the mat- 
ter, change the character of men, really change it, and 
the most highly refined system of ethics will instantly 
become superfluous. Show men how to be spontane- 
ously good instead of boring them with dissertations on 
virtue!” 

Even on this road I was going back to my obsession 
with a spiritual revolution: change in men, change in 
minds. But I was going to change not only spirits 
but things as well; in fact, the reason for changing 
people was to be able to change things more easily 
and more rapidly. But to change things it was not 
enough to write their names in books, classify them 
according to nature and origin, reduce them to general 
ideas and these generals to universals—eventually 
establishing the causative relations between the various 
groups of concepts. It was not enough to exhibit them 
in show-cases, each show-case labeled with the (in- 
violable?) law it illustrated. To change reality, it was 


ACTION? 201 


not enough to know its exteriors through the cate- 
gories of the reasoning intellect and the symbols of 
language. We must get inside it, penetrate it, become 
parts of it, each of us an atom of its mass, a moment 
of its existence, a spark of its flame, a drop of its 
current. 

We must come in contact with all its aspects (even 
the most recondite, the most transitory, the least per- 
ceptible), blend ourselves with its fullness, abandon 
ourselves to its flow, lose ourselves in its immensity, be- 
come living realities in a living reality. We should not 
just stand in its presence like so many thinking ma- 
chines, so many microscopes, so many rubber stamps, 
so many tape-measures; rather we should dive into it 
headlong, penetrate into it and be penetrated by it, feel 
within our own selves the eternal multicolor, multi- 
sound, and multisavor of its flux, putting its pulse in 
rhythm with the pulsation of our blood, with our own 
heartbeat, so completely identifying ourselves with 
reality that it becomes wholly of us, all of us within it. 

Now I could see no one reaching out, aspiring, 
toward this mystical oneness. Not even the artists. 
They: too, though they give expression to the particular, 
select, choose, eliminate, impoverish. There are sides, 
phases, flashes, of things which no one sees, which no 
one is trying to see—a task far different from acrobatic 
leaps and climbs up to the sterile unities of Monism! 
Philosophers could much better apply themselves to 
this patient excavation of the concrete particular than 
continue playing with such kindergarten toys as a 


202 THE FAILURE 


priori definitions and symmetrical systems. Along my 
way would lie a first advance toward control of the 
world. 

If man instead of detaching himself from reality 
(considering it merely as something to be measured and 
judged by him) were so to melt, so to dissolve himself, 
into the real as to feel its every atom and appearance 
kin of his kin, his finite limited body would be absorbed 
into the limitless infinite body of the universe: his 
microcosm would become the very macrocosm. Every 
part of the world would be as a part of him; and just 
as he can now move any of his limbs at will, so then 
he would be able to move any element of the world. 

Out of this ferment of ideas sprang that particular 
type of philosophy of mine which was called Prag- 
matism; though the pragmatism of other pragmatists 
was of a nature and origin quite different from mine. 
Nevertheless I joined them and devoted myself to 
spreading the truths of this new doctrine. With me, 
however, it was a magical mysticism. With others it 
was only a precautionary method. The critics put us 
all in the same boat and damned us all together. Yet 
we did work some yeast into the dough of conservative 
and traditional philosophy. 

A man of theory myself, I could not forget the 
theorists. I had them especially in mind during this 
period, for I wanted them to be my companions in my 
great work. I would use my art to bring emotional 
people to their senses. Theory would attract the in- 
tellectuals to my “‘cause.” With such a glorious ob- 


ACTION? 203 


jective in view I could not afford to overlook or despise 
any one. Myth and intuition; image and concept— 
everything must be put to work. I would exploit every 
spiritual form in this crusade for the uplifting of the 
spirit—turning every instinct and every faculty of man 
toward the creation of a new man. 


Chapter 27: ‘Toward a New World 


Heap of a philosophy, its law-giver, apostle, and 
supreme pontiff! A philosophy of action, a philosophy 
of doing, of rebuilding, transforming, creating! No 
more waste of time on unsolvable problems! No more 
wild goose chasing down roads leading nowhere save 
into the snares and traps of visionary logicians. The 
true is the useful. To know is to do. Among many 
uncertain truths, choose the one best calculated to raise 
the tone of life and promising the most lasting rewards. 
If something is not true but we wish it were true, we 
will make it true: by faith. 

A gospel of power, a gospel of courage, a practical, 
an optimistic, an American gospel! Away with fear! 
Daring! Forward! A leap in the dark! Away with 
doubt! Every hundred-dollar bill of theory must be 
convertible into the small change of particular facts, 
of desirable achievements! Away with metaphysics! 
Welcome to religions! Metaphysics give the dry con- 
cept of the world’s outlines; religions open warm and 
comforting and alluring vistas of lives without end and 
of values eternally guaranteed at par! 

Of what use is a knowledge which in the first place is 
not knowledge, and which, in the second place, in no 
way enters our lives nor changes them by one iota? 


We must have a tool-philosophy, a hammer-and-anvil 
204 


TOWARD A NEW WORLD 205 


idea, a theory that produces, a practical promotion and 
exploitation of spirit! 

Taken in this way in a somewhat lyric tone, and duly 
exaggerated, of course, pragmatism was an inspiration 
to me. I took the whole movement under my wing, 
developed it, made it popular, forced it on others, de- 
fending, expounding, summarizing it in a rapid fire of 
books and articles. 

But it was not enough for me. It was not sufficiently 
mine. I had to get it out of the Anglo-Saxon fur- 
nished room it had rented from Bible-quoting mission- 
aries in laymen’s clothes. I had to set it up in a 
celestial mansion all its own, a mansion in the Heaven 
of Absurdity! I either had to make it something truly 
great or else throw it away. 

I adopted therefore that part of pragmatism which 
promised most—the part which taught how, through 
faith, beliefs not corresponding to reality could be made 
true. But why limit this action to beliefs? Why create 
the truth of a few particular faiths only? The spirit 
should be master of everything. The power of the will 
should have no limitations whatever! Just as scien- 
tific knowledge in a sense creates facts, and just as 
the will to believe creates truth, even so the spirit must 
dominate the all, create and transform at pleasure, 
without intermediaries. So far, to control external 
things, we have had to use other external things: 
our minds control our muscles, and these in turn 
set other parts of material reality in motion be- 
fore we can move, or change, the reality we have in 


206 THE FAILURE 


view. Whereas I wanted spirit to do everything all 
by itself, by its own fiat, without any go-betweens. 
Spirit, too, I thought, is one of the forces of nature— 
in fact, is the noblest, the most perfect, the most re- 
fined of them all. Why not the most powerful then? 
All we have to do is understand, manipulate it. Just 
as we can already act directly on certain parts of real- 
ity (those parts which are parts of our body or are 
most directly concerned with our lives), so we should 
be able to act on all of reality in its entirety, without 
exception. Study and practice should suffice, if only 
we desire, hope, and try with all our might. If we 
are victorious all the world will be ours, like a paste, 
a clay, that can be molded and formed according to 
our desires. And the prophecy of the First Serpent 
will be fulfilled: Ye shall be like unto gods! 

To be gods! All men—gods! Lo, the dream of 
dreams, the Emprise Impossible, the long-sought Goal 
of Glory! It became my program, my platform, for 
myself and for others: the Imitation of God—Omnis- 
cience and Omnipotence, to be attained by way of a 
Spirit perfected, enlarged, gigantified, endowed with 
new qualities and new faculties. 

Great, in very deed, my dream; but I did not despair 
of realizing it. Had a man ever before set out de- 
liberately to become God? Men had tried to be char- 
latans, yes; prophets and miracle workers, yes;—but 
not gods. Some of them were mistaken for gods, but 
after their own times and by other people. Divinity 
was not their goal of attainment but rather an effect of 


TOWARD A NEW WORLD 207 


the superstitions prevailing around and after them. 
The Emperors of Rome, lazy lunatics that they were, 
believed themselves to be gods; but they thought they 
were gods already; they did not try to become such. 
I was different! I wanted to become a god, but I 
realized that I was still far from being one. 

There have been men who proposed to lose them- 
selves in God—mystics, ascetics, saints—but in the 
sense of reéntering into God, a particle, a drop, an 
atom of an infinite Deity which creates and integrates, 
exhales and reinhales (in a rhythmic pant, as it were) 
all men and all things. 

My idea was to be, not a part, but the whole—not a 
part, but the whole of which everything would be a 
part—everything obedient to me; as if the mountains, 
and the stars, and the whirling worlds were members 
of my body—obedient members. I did not believe in 
God. God did not exist for me at that time, nor had 
He ever existed for me. I wanted to create Him for 
future use and make of myself, a poor, weak, wretched 
man, a supreme and sovereign Being, all-rich and 
all-powerful. 

I thought of founding a religion on my expectation 
and preparation of the God-Man. Where? Certainly 
not in Europe, penniless, intimidated, disillusioned 
under its crusts of successive civilizations. In Amer- 
ica! In that vast North America, with its limitless 
possibilities, where everything new is welcomed, where 
every creed finds a temple, and every Moses a capital. 
I had found a companion quite worthy of me, as crazy 


208 THE FAILURE 


as I was, determined to go with me and to share with 
me the insults and the triumphs in store. 

We had thought of everything: of learning English; 
of studying conditions in North America; of getting 
the funds we would need to start with. We agreed to 
spend some years in preparation, living in solitude, 
studying the question of the power of the mind, ex- 
perimenting, strengthening our wills, discovering the 
secrets of direct spiritual action, so as ultimately to 
be ready to produce miracles and wonders—if the men 
out there, stubborn as Peters and incredulous as doubt- 
ing Thomases, asked for them. We even went so far 
as to choose the name of our new church and to write 
out the creed of our magic and marvelous faith. 

The two of us, two Italians, poor, and philosophers 
to boot, would go out there to offer to all men omnipo- 
tence, wealth, skill, salvation, eternity—everything, in 
short, which men most ardently desire and crave. The 
two of us alone would cross the sea to transform that 
world which an obstinate and unscrupulous Italian had 
discovered long years before. Thence we would re- 
turn to Europe, with halos of glory about our heads, 
followed by thousands of faithful believers, and cer- 
tain that, propped on this splinter of matter lost in 
space, we could challenge all other worlds at last made 
subject to our wills! 


A 


Chapter 28: The Approach to Divinity 


Now indeed, intelligence and goodness, poetry and 
system, would not help me much! 

Before crossing the Atlantic as a prophet of the New 
Kingdom I would have to be—really, effectively be— 
what, during my long vigil, I had dreamed of being 
and asked others to be: saint, leader, demigod! 

The time for plans, hopes, promises, programs, pipe 
dreams, was past, with some to spare! 

Who would have any use for a saint who could not 
produce his miracle, for a founder without divine 
prestige, for a god without a god’s powers? If that 
and only that was to be the sole object of my life, I 
must come to the point without further delay. The 
divine butterfly must burst from its drab cocoon. The 
fruit must ripen in fulfilment of the rash promises of 
the blossoms. I must leap all obstacles, cancel all 
postponements, burn my bridges, change my life, my 
character, my soul, seal with action the long-winded 
advertisement of my intentions! 

I did not cajole myself with the confidence that I 
could do everything all by myself, with nothing to start 
with. In spite of my haughty scorn of the past, I too 
would have to attach myself to some tradition, trust 
myself to the teachings of others, reap the benefit of 
past experience. Which way was I to turn with the 
greatest prospect of assistance? 

209 


210 THE FAILURE 


My immediate object was a simple one: to increase 
the power of my will until it became a limitless will, 
until my spirit could command men and things with- 
out recourse to external instruments, until, in other 
words, I could do miracles—nothing more, nothing 
less! 

The saints and the magicians (or people who were 
perhaps a little of both: the Hebrew prophets and the 
Indian fakirs) pretended they had performed miracles 
—the ones without trying, almost without wishing, to; 
the others by subjecting themselves to severe régimes 
of life, sustained by secret doctrines and forces beyond 
themselves. But at any rate miracles there had been! 
Already the rudiments of an art of miracles existed! 
Mere beginnings, mere hints, mere rudiments—but 
enough for a beginning. The problem was to recon- 
stitute the art as a whole, rediscover its basic rules and 
learn how to apply them. Even if the miracles which 
the biographers of the saints and the theorists of 
magic told were not true miracles in the strict phil- 
osophical sense of the term, that would make no dif- 
ference to me. All the better even: they were facts 
out of the ordinary; examples of unusual faculties; 
striking manifestations of the power of will, cases of 
men blessed with divine endowments. That much 
would do! 

By studying these men, going deep down into their 
lives, observing the methods they used to do what 
they did, I would in the end be able to discover their 
secrets—the basic process common to all miracles. 


THE APPROACH TO DIVINITY 211 


The rest would be easy—a mere question of will, of 
persistence. Once I found the road, progress along 
it would not be difficult. Where others had gone I 
too could go! 

The saints took me toward religions; the magicians 
to the occult sciences—roads that diverge only in ap- 
pearance: religion and magic were born together in 
the early ages. The saints themselves were miracle 
workers (even Christ himself?), and the magicians 
(the real ones) led, as they had to lead, pure, noble, 
ascetic lives, lives of renunciation and self-sacrifice. I 
was already well acquainted with both these roads: the 
heavenly road that went up and up to a consecrated 
paradise; the underground road that led down and 
down to hells accursed. 

After the failure of my Aufkldrung I had gone back 
toward the faiths again with a considerable degree of 
interest—especially toward Christianity, toward Ca- 
tholicism. I had re-read the Gospels without the cap- 
tious Voltairian animosity of my earlier years; I had 
revisited the churches and cathedrals, not, as before, to 
admire the architecture, the pictures of the altars and 
the frescoes in the chapels. I had re-read the Gospels 
to find Christ; I had reéntered the churches to find - 
God. 

Worship attracted me—and not just for the music 
of the high masses and the beauty of the ceremonial. 
A vague indefinite something—a curious hunger for be- 
lieving, for becoming a child again, for feeling myself 
in communion with the brotherhood I had left—was 


212 THE FAILURE 


stirring gently within me, not ready as yet to define 
itself. I read Saint Augustine; I thought deeply over 
Pascal; I delighted in the “Little Flowers of Saint 
Francis.” I went as far as the Introduction a la Vie 
Dévote and the “Spiritual Exercises” of the Church. 
What was it? Psychological curiosity? A desire for 
information? ; 

To a great extent, yes. But in it also was a grain 
of the will to believe, a humble desire to have a part 
in that magnificent religious experiment which from 
the time of Jesus had been giving the world so many 
masterpieces of talent and of character. Apologetics 
interested me; and mysticism, through the examples 
offered by friends of mine, had a special fascination. 
I began to hobnob with ancient and modern mystics 
from Plotinus to Novalis; above all, with the Ger- 
mans (Meister Eckhart, Suso, Bohme) and the 
Spaniards (Raymond Lully, Saint Theresa, Saint John 
of the Cross); both the speculative and the sensuous 
—not forgetting the hermits or the anchorites, des- 
perate lovers of God, who spent their lives in un- 
ceasing prayer in mountain fastnesses. In each of 
them I found something that seemed to fit my case: 
exaltation, submersion, immersion in Being, despair, 
surrender, expectations of the highest destinies. 

In some of the heterodox mystics, such as Novalis, I 
found most explicit promises of what I was looking 
for, though nothing more than promises, expectations. 
The others took me up toward the rarefied atmospheres 
of the most abstract love. But these men asked me 


i. 
} 


THE APPROACH TO DIVINITY 213 


to give up my mind, my consciousness, my individual- 


ity. They invited me to absorption, to fusion, in the 
‘infinite indefiniteness of the one invisible God—not in 
the ever-flowing, ever-turbulent ocean of the particular. 
True, some of them, losing themselves in this inde- 


finable, ineffable Deity, had succeeded in doing what 
I wanted to do: miracles. By renouncing everything, 


even themselves, even their individualities, they had 


gained everything. He who loseth his life shall save 
it! To him who giveth his all shall all be given! 
Here was a peep-hole on the secret of divine power— 


but a little one, a very narrow and doubtful one, at 


best! 
In working out a theory of the diversity of being, 


I had already come to the conclusion that to force the 


obedience of the All it is necessary to become one with 
the All. So long as we consider ourselves as separate 
we have no right to give orders to something we do 
not feel as one with us; and if we give such orders 
they will not be obeyed. Mysticism, in fact, was a 
breaking down of barriers, a denial of separateness, an 
impulse toward absolute and eternal inseparability. 
The mystic does not feel himself as something apart 
from the world, from Being, from God. So then, hav- 
ing become an intimate, essential, integral part of the 
world, every part of his will, no matter how small, is 
reflected in being. Abdicating as a particular, indi- 
vidual will, he becomes, unconsciously, a sort of uni- 
versal will; and the most rigorous physical laws fall 
before the loving desire of an ecstatic. 


214 THE FAILURE 


But even the power of the saints is limited and in- 
termittent, and inherent in the very manner of its: 
attainment is the germ of its unattainableness. Abso- 
lute power can be attained only through absolute re- 
nunciation of one’s Self. But when this complete re- 
nunciation has taken place, every memory of thought, 
every trace of will, every stimulus of desire, will have 
disappeared, never to return again. In such circum- 
stances volition would be inconceivable and impossible. 
A person achieving this supreme power would for that 
very reason be unable to make use of it. 

But I, for my part, could never consent to giving up 
my individuality. Of what use would a complete 
power be if it were lost in unconsciousness? What 
I wanted was to exert my power on particular things; 
to know things, use things, foresee things. No loss 
of personality for me! No abolition of thought! 

So I went off boldly down the other road—toward 
occultism. 

This was not the first time I had attempted to pene- 
trate the outer halls of the accursed temple. In the 
latter days of my adventures in encyclopedism I had 
knocked at that same door. The marvelous had always 
lured me (O wondrous “Arabian Nights,” masterpiece 
of poetic masterpieces! ); and it was not even yet be- 
neath me to indulge that appetite in table tipping and 
in listening to the jumbled words of mediums not over- 
subtle. In my journeys along the vulgar highways 
of spiritualism (ridiculous ‘evening parties,” hysteri- 


THE APPROACH TO DIVINITY 215 


cal old women in black crépe, red lanterns, nudges with 
hands and legs under the tables, suppressed giggles, 
painful silences, agonized suspenses, waiting for the 
fateful taps to come) I had scraped quite an acquaint- 
ance among these spies on the Hereafter. A few of 
them, the deepest in their dotage, wanted only to be 
convinced that life continued after death. Others, 
idealists, aspired to a moral regeneration of this world 
through a knowledge of the laws of the next. Still 
others, bigger heroes or bigger frauds, I don’t know 
which, gave to understand that all these little physical 
phenomena of mediumism, all these rigmaroles and 
abracadabras of Theosophy were nothing, or at most 
a mere beginning. They hinted at higher doctrines, 
secret traditions, masters invisible or far away, esoteri- 
cisms of the highest order, reserved for those only who 
could survive a thousand terrible tests; and these held 
out a promise, couched in vague binons terms, of 
power—the very power I was looking for everywhere. 
I talked at length with some of them. I read the turgid 
source-books of their parasitic wisdom; I attended 
several meetings of diabolical shade. I embarked, 
gingerly, on a novitiate in Theosophy. I experimented 
with the breathing exercises recommended by various 
Indo-Yankee Yogees. Insistently I demanded, I 
begged, to know their various secrets and offered my- 
self as their disciple. Not that I had any great faith 
in all their hodge-podge of theology and symbolism, 
from which, according to them, light would eventually 


216 THE FAILURE 


spurt—the light which was to give us new life, a life 
rich in powers. But I did believe that there might 
be a certain amount of truth in the suggestions of- 
fered to disciples so far as they concerned preparation 
for a mental (and physical) régime different from the 
usual ones. 

At such muddled and chaotic “philosophies,” at the 
ceremonies and the formulas which one generation of 
charlatans stupidly copied or inherited from the one 
before it, I could only smile. And yet I was obstinate 
in my conviction that among all that mass of teach- 
ings and experiments, which had been transmitted and 
tried out over dozens of centuries, between Orient and 
Occident, there must be something sound, something 
reliable—the nucleus, perhaps, the seed, the first glim- 
mer of an art of miracle-working. 

With my usual fervor I plunged into research, read- 
ing, and meditation. Material effects of spiritual 
causes actually existed, unless all the mediums and 
medium-followers who ever lived were liars. ‘Telepa- 
thy already foreshadowed what future relationships 
between men might be after slow and heavy inter- 
mediaries had been suppressed—the transference of 
objects to considerable distances, the so-called “ma- 
terializations” (not denied by everybody), the first 
examples of transcendental possibilities, of direct psy- 
chic control over the inanimate world. These miracles 
were performed only by abnormal people in unusual 
states of mind: the point was to make them possible 
to everybody, even under most ordinary conditions. 


THE APPROACH TO DIVINITY — 217 


. Often they were involuntary; they must become volun- 
tary. They were few in number; they must become 
_ commonplaces. 

I was convinced that to be successful I must pro- 
ceed methodically. Who were the people that per- 
formed such wonders? Saints, magicians, mediums: 
different names for super-potent individuals of dif- 
fering beliefs, who produced very similar prodigies. 
Hence, I concluded, the secret could not lie in creeds. 
The saint steeped in his Catholic theology; the magi- 
cian in his cabalistic, Alexandrian, or Paracelsian the- 
ology; the medium in a spiritualistic theology @ la 
Allen Kardec, all did, or hoped they would do, or 
- promised they would do, the very same things. There- 
fore, the real-cause must be found in some funda- 
mental similarity in all these men, who by chance or 
in some religious frenzy—and always spasmodically— 
manifested their powers. So there we were! Study 
these men, study them deeply, minutely, intimately, in 
their beliefs, their systems of life, their constitutions, 
their dispositions, their abnormalities! Work out the 
physiology and the psychology of the Man of Powers! 
This done, we could easily derive a method of sub- 
limating the will; and men could be artificially edu- 
cated and trained so that to each one could be sys- 
tematically apportioned his share of divinity. 

I was true to my principle: to think of the instru- 
ment and not of the theory; to modify and reform 
practice rather than change just words and terminolo- 
gies. My objective and my procedure once clearly 


218 THE FAILURE 


established, I set furiously to work. Psychologies, 
general and individual, normal and pathological; leg- 
ends of saints; autobiographies of seers; minutes of 
séances and catechisms of initiates; treatises on magic 
and histories of miracle-working—all were grist to my 
mill. I devoured them all with my old impatient 
voracity. 

I assembled piles and piles of notes. I followed 
blind leads. I tried experiments. I would think I 
had found the way at last; I would fail, give up, and 
start over again. Time was pressing. I was getting 
older! I had pledged myself to the most solemn un- 
dertaking of my life. I must discover that secret 
and master it at all costs—otherwise, kill myself! I 
lived in perpetual anxiety—my face pale, my eyes 
staring, my mind in a daze. Fever! My brain refus- 
ing finally to work, my head one throbbing, pulsing 
pain! 

I lost consciousness more than once. More often 
I would lose my way, unable to grasp the significance 
of things or remember the meaning of words. My 
friends grew frightened; but I drove them away with 
harsh words. I would feel I was going to die and would 
go off into solitude, regarding every one as an enemy. 
Without saying a word to a living soul I decided I 
would withdraw from the world. Up there in the high 
mountains, there closer to the sky, far from the noise 
and chatter of the city, I would succeed more easily 
in vanquishing the mystery. My weakness increased 
and reached a truly alarming stage. Hideous night- 


THE APPROACH TO DIVINITY 219 


‘mares haunted me. Madness was there at my elbow 
ready to clutch me. Everything turned blear and gray 
about me and about my tottering brain so tensely, so 
painfully straining toward the Impossible. 

I went away, alone, for one last experiment, my 
mad dream raging in my heart! Either I would come 
down from the mountains victorious and dreadful as 
a god—or I would never come back at all. 

However—I came back.... 


Lentissuno 


“And below are the vultures that feast on hearts ever renewed.” 
MaTTEO PALMIERI. 





Chapter 29: I Come Down from the 
Mountains 


I caME back again. ... 

I cannot bear to think of that journey home. I 
cannot tell what it meant in my life. A hideous blush 
of shame rises to my cheeks. A cold shiver runs 
down my back. My eyes grow dim. My teeth chat- 
ter. My heart seems about to stop beating,—but then 
it starts going again with a noisy thumping, as though 
it were trying to silence the inner voice of my remorse. 

It was not a return; it was a defeat, a flight, a rout 
—it was an end. 

I felt that the best of my life had been lived; that 
the part I was to play in the world was closing—there. 
I should continue, of course, to eat, to sleep, to write, 
possibly even to achieve “success,” to give a little 
pleasure to people (amusing them with my writings, 
making a name for myself); but my metaphysical life 
had been stopped short. It was the end, not of a 
period, but of a human being, not of an experience, 
but of a soul. 

Hope, pride, perfection, divinity! O dreams so 
truly dreamed! O enthusiasms so sincerely experi- 
enced! O loves insatiate, impatient, like Springtimes 
too early hot with summer suns! ‘Those of you who 


have not suffered thus, who have not spent long nights 
223 


224. THE FAILURE 


in darkness, waiting for doors to open and a great 
light to break; those of you who have never pressed 
parched lips to a cooling fountain; any of you who 
has not felt himself great on a great mountain top— 
rival of God, master of men, lord of the earth, above 
and beyond good and evil, above and beyond the use- 
ful and the useless, the small and the great, the base 
and the noble, alone with himself, alone in Heaven, 
cannot understand what I felt, what I still feel, as I 
think of that catabasis. 

I came down—down from the heights, down from 
the mountains, down from the hills. Not as the proud 
shepherd of the burning bush, with the Laws of Truth 
graven in his heart and on a stone! Not as the gentle 
Shepherd from the Mount of Olives to a torture that 
promised immortality, to a death that would be the 
beginning of Life. I came down, alone and blind. It 
was not a descent—it was a fall, a plunge, a crash! 
Not one smile of hope brightened my face. All was 
over! Again the mediocrity, the commonplace, the 
low, the cheap, the insignificant—and forever. Fare- 
well to youth! Farewell to divinity! Farewell to 
real life! 

I had gone up to the mountains stupidly thinking 
that three or five thousand feet above the level of the 
sea I would be nearer heaven. I had shut myself off 
in solitude, with the notion that outside and beyond 
the solitude which the strong spirit creates by with- 
drawing into itself, there was yet another. Resting my 
head on the close cropped grass of highland pastures, 


[ COME DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAINS 225 


my arms outstretched like a crucified Titan, seeing 
nothing but the heavenly Infinite of poetry and faith, 
alone with the open sky, trembling when the stars 
began to tremble in the deep blue of the twilight, I 
awaited the moment, the instant when, in an explosion, 
in a burst of light, the blinding revelation, the miracle 
would come.’ 

But it did not come! I called, and no one answered 
my call. I watched and waited; and no one came to 
me in my suspense. Nature was deaf to my voice. 
Nothing changed. Everything was just as it had been 
before. No human being was near me; but I could 
hear them sneering far away down there on the plains. 
I could hear them laughing in mockery, pleased, satis- 
fied, delighted at my failure. “And he thought that 
he could be greater than we are! He thought he could 
get above humanity! He actually pitied us! And 
now, look at him! If he wants to get a living, he also 
must . . .”—A woman, just a woman, was the only 
one that wept, down there on the plains. Was she 
really sorry for me? Were her tears sincere? Or was 
igsjust a case of wounded vanity? 

I fell sick. What little strength I had left deserted 
me. I returned to town, to my own house, to rela- 
tives, neighbors, strangers. I returned as a convict, 
who for a brief hour thought he had been pardoned, 
might return to his cell among fellow prisoners. I was 
not what I had been before. I was not what I had tried 
to be. I was a monster—an unhappy, ungainly mon- 
ster. Pale, weak, bashful, self-conscious, I fled from 


226 THE FAILURE 


everybody. Nothing in the world of common values 
could now attract me. Even my friends I shunned. I 
said I would see no one; that for some time I wished 
to remain alone, savagely alone, as in the days of my 
boyhood. I locked myself in my house. I went to 
another city. I did no work whatever. I answered no 
letters. I replied to no insults. I requited no love. 

What indeed could grip me, hold me, after what I 
had tried and failed to do? Art? Fame? Thought? 
Were they not the joys I had left behind, the happi- 
ness I had renounced, the goals I had passed without 
attaining them—because they seemed too obvious, too 
small, too easy? 

How can a man who has desired everything be con- 
tent with a little? How can the man who has sought 
heaven be satisfied with the earth? How can the man 
who has trodden the pathways of divinity be resigned 
to mere humanity? Impossible! For him everything 
is closed, lost—over! Beyond help, beyond recall! 
Nothing more can be done about it! Consolation? 
Not even that! Tears? But to weep one must have 
some strength at least; to weep one must have some 
hope! I am nothing, now! I know nothing. I count 
for nothing. There is nothing I would lift a finger for 
nor move a foot for. I ama thing, nota man. Touch 
me! I am as cold as a stone, as cold as a sepulcher. 
Hic jacet! Were lies a man, who tried to be God— 
and failed! 


Chapter 30: I Have Only Myself to Blame 


I vo not bawl at you, O Destiny, eternal and abstract 
Cyrenian of human anemia. Nor do I bear a grudge 
against the asininity and wickedness of men, who hin- 
dered the flowering and fruition of my spirit and did 
not vouchsafe me the triumphs which I deserved— 
perhaps! 

Yes, friend, notice! I say perhaps! I may have 
been weak: let us therefore not be unjust. God grant 
me the supreme courage to look with opened eyes into 
my opened eyes, to read, without halts, pauses, paren- 
theses, reticences, in the book of my memory, to probe, 
to sound, the depths of its wounds, unmindful of the 
proud flesh, unmindful of the agony! 

_ I did not succeed in what I had planned. I did not 
fulfil my promise. I did not attain that high estate of 
spirit, that glory, that potency which I dreamed of, 
desired, willed, in the years that are past. Where lay 
the blame? On those promises, projects, desires them- 
selves—aspirations too great? Not at all! No heights 
are too high! But our wings are too short, our powers 
too limited! I aimed at some of those things which are 
said to be impossible, things which no man has ever 
accomplished so far in this world. But was not that 
the very cause of my pride and of my madness? Had 


I not of my own deliberate choice, voluntarily, gaily, 
227 


228 THE FAILURE 


presumptuously, joined that little band of men who 
seek the impossible because it is impossible, and the 
undoable because it is undoable! 

No! No whining! No alibis! I shall not allege 
insuperable obstacles, poverty, the mediocrity of my 
times, the envy of those who knew me, the scorn of 
those who knew me not, the indifference of most peo- 
ple! Nonsense, such excuses! ‘There is no force so 
great that it cannot be overcome by a greater force; 
there is no enemy so strong that he cannot be laid 
low by a stronger man; there is no poverty so poor as 
to exclude the possibility of wondrous riches; there is 
no ice that cannot be melted, warmed, and brought to 
a boil. : 

When a man starts out on an enterprise he should 
take into account all that will be needed to carry it 
through. If his strength and means are not sufficient, 
he should either get them before he sets to work or 
else—give up, go off and hide in a dark corner where 
he can do what everybody else is doing. 

No, my friend, not even that defense wili do. The 
trouble—I can say it now—is this: the weakest men 
are the men who attempt the biggest things. ‘The 
greatest cowards try the most foolhardy bravados. It 
is the hollow chests and the spindly legs that dream of 
Marathons! Why? More reasons than one! The 
love of contrariness present in all human affairs. Our 
need of keeping our courage up, by stimulating, 
astounding ourselves, with pretensions of power and 
greatness. Our subconscious thought that we can 


I HAVE ONLY MYSELF TO BLAME 229 


always excuse ourselves, in the hour of failure, by 
pointing to the mightiness of what we tried to do. 
So, pretending to do wonders all the time, we do less 
than others do, meantime having the satisfaction of 
grand and glorious defeats! “Poor boy! He had such 
great ideals! Who knows what he might have done 
had he been just a little less ambitious!” 

- All these tricks and traps and subterfuges in the 
minds of failures I know so well that I have no use 
for them whatever. Let it never be said that I seek 
my alibi in a play on words, that I rouge up my pov- 
erty of spirit under a cosmetic of poetry and pathos. 

I did not succeed because I lacked the brains to 
succeed, because I did not seriously try to succeed! 
That is the simple and unadorned truth. I did not 
succeed because I lacked the necessary strength; be- 
cause I lacked even the real desire to find or to create 
the resources I required; because never at every mo- 
ment in my life did I really have within me, as the axis 
of my life, as the central dynamo of my soul, the vision 
which I talked about and glorified in words. 

You think it costs me nothing to make this blunt 
confession of the weakness and the sham in my life? 
But why should I go on deceiving myself and others? 

Oftentimes, instead of keeping to my room with my 
thoughts alone for company, I would succumb to a 
moment’s impatience and run out into the streets. 
There I would stop and look at the shop windows, or 
follow the line of electric lights flaming above my 
head, or board a clanging, bumping street car, or 


230 THE FAILURE 


enter a café to study the illustrations in some low- 
brow magazine, or go and see my friends to chatter in 
a stupid, light, or witty conversation with them; or 
make a social call and drink a cup of coffee out of cup 
and saucer of gold, flirting with girls from ‘‘out of 
town” or gossiping with affectionate old ladies. ' 

Far too often I would drop a half-finished page at a 
difficult point to throw myself on my sofa and read 
any book at all that would make me feel I was think- 
ing for myself. At such times I even went so far as 
to look for the jokes in the newspapers. Laziness, 
sweet and poisonous laziness, with its hundred faces 
and its hundred smiles, has almost always had its mis- 
leading, seducing, corrupting charm for me. I would 
be cold or sleepy; there was not paper enough or pens 
—any excuse was good to keep me from working! My 
laziness has postponed, retarded for years and years 
the radical cure of my mind—power to make a final 
decision! Besides, I was ever yielding to my body— 
stomach and sensuality! I have eaten so much at 
times that I could do no work for hours; or again I 
would drink so much that a pleasant state of drunken- 
ness would come over me in which nothing seemed 
serious, and everything was easy, joyful, far away. I 
have wasted hours and hours, days and days, nights 
and nights, with women. 

Then again, fear of ridicule often stopped me half 
way when I was about to compromise myself before 
the world of belly and pocketbook. Consideration for 
others, the easy prudence of the World of Get-There, 


| 


| 1 HAVE ONLY MYSELF TO BLAME 231 


| aade me timid, uncertain, lukewarm, forgetful. My 
yersonal interests, my need of money not infrequently 
leflected my small remnant of strength from its 
aigher purposes, clouded my mind, forced it to lies, 
“ompromises, retreats. Little by little the beautiful 
jours of exaltation became rarer. New cares took pos- 
-ession of my mind. Sloth stopped my ears with cot- 
/on-wool to deaden the clamor of warning or of re- 
‘norse. Pleasures of a lower order, aims more com- 
‘nonplace, kept me in that state of indolent, however 
-estless, dreaming—the death of all activity—in which 
[ still kept on making promises in words, but in which 
the great strength of will that I glimpsed in myself at 
‘imes, all my old enthusiasms and energy, evaporated, 
jied out, leaving only dying embers in my soul glow- 
‘ng now and then under dead gray ashes. 

So step by step I came to a frank realization of my 
impotence. I cast aside my divine plans and my 
heroic vows that I might write the serious and sorry 
‘tale of a mind’s defeat. I have only myself to blame. 
And I do blame only myself—in the hope perhaps 
that frankness will win pardon for a little of my past 


‘cowardice. 

















| 


Chapter 31: Days of Shame 


I BELIEVE that I am often one of the most hypocritical 
time-wasters in this world. 

I sleep ten consecutive hours without waking, with- 
out dreaming. When I get up my head is heavy, my 
tongue thick. I go out-of-doors with nothing in view. 
I come home to rest. I eat voraciously. I sip a large 
cup of coffee. I smoke five or ten cigarettes. I lounge 
in one armchair and put my feet on another. I read 
the newspaper from end to end like a pensioned civil 
service official. I go out to meet some acquaintance of 
a Skeptical turn of mind for a round or two of verbal 
sparring, ironical, bitter, stupid. I enter a café, drink 
a cup of corn-starched chocolate, and get away with 
three or four disgusting vanilla éclairs. I run through 
a bundle of crumpled and torn periodicals and almost 
smile as I squint at the idiotic cartoons in color. Again 
I go out into the street now ablaze with the theater 
lights. I follow a painted and powdered prostitute 
as if she were a first love. I drop into a bookshop 
and for a few cents buy a book with uncut pages which 
I will never read. I stop in front of a grocer’s window 
and hungrily look at the greasy cheeses and the boxes 
of sardines. I call at a house where I am welcome for 
tea, and I drink four, five, six cups, hoping it will 
help me get back a little of my brains. If I feel like 


232 


DAYS OF SHAME 233 


| ‘it—and even if I don’t—I step into a brothel to kill 
time, a few minutes, a few hours, to forget the things 
which I should be doing and am not doing, to degrade 
myself, to debase myself, to stifle my remorse, to drug 
My conscience. Every now and then, when I cannot 
help myself, I write a letter or even ten letters, to get 
‘rid of them, to get rid of everybody, all at once; and 
_ occasionally, in the evening, when my heart is really 
too full and I am inconsolably unhappy I take my big 
_ black pen in hand and write down anything that comes 
into my head. Madly I cover ten, twenty, forty sheets 
_of white paper with my explosions of emotion, my 
| expressions of contrition, my strained, witty, rarefied, 
_and distilled absurdities. 
_ But what can you expect of a man who divides his 
time between slumber and coffee, between table and 
bed, lazy, sleepy—good at blowing the trumpet, not so 
good when it comes to fighting the battle he has called 
for? I rise in my wrath from warm sheets or over- 
stuffed armchairs to scream like an eagle because my 
spirit is insulted; and I lay out a plan for an austere, 
solitary, scornful, noble life—something in the style of 
Michelangelo—for my fellow men to live. 

Let no one say I do not feel the infamy of this 
double life I lead. I do feel it; and the more deeply 
I feel it the more deeply I wallow in it to forget my 
shame. Confession comforts me a little. But when I 
have mirrored the lurid picture of a self-betrayer in 
angry words that all may see it and spit upon it, I 
imagine I am forgiven, saved. I arise with an air of 





234 | THE FAILURE 


triumph, as if this disgusting exhibitionism had puri- 
fied and transformed me. The next day I continue as 
before. I go to bed at nine o’clock. I sleep ten 
hours without waking or dreaming. I get up with an 
empty head and with a bitter taste in my mouth; and 
I spend the day in the self-same manner I confessed 
to with shudders the day before. And again, alas, 
when I can no longer bear it, I sit down at my table 
and again begin to spoil another ream of paper with 
words, words, words, singing in verses of countless syl- 
lables the miseries of the ascetic hero who sees human 
things with divine eyes! 

So low have I fallen that never once do I think of 
dropping arsenic into the cup of yellow, over-sweet- 
ened tea I have at my elbow. 


Chapter 32: What Do You Want of Me? 


AND yet everybody wants to see me. Everybody in- 
_ sists on having a talk with me. People pester me 
and they pester others with inquiries about what I am 
doing. How am I? Am I quite well again? Is my 
appetite good? Do I still go for my walks in the 
country? Am I working? Have I finished my book? 
Will I begin another soon? 

A skinny monkey of a German wants to translate 
my works. A wild-eyed Russian girl wants me to 
_ write an account of my life for her. An American lady 
_ wants the very latest news about me. An American 
gentleman will send his carriage to take me to dinner 
—just an intimate, confidential talk, you know. An 
old schoolmate and chum of mine, of ten years ago, 
wants me to read him all that I write as fast as l 
write it. A painter friend I know expects me to pose 
for him by the hour. A newspaper man wants my 
present address. An acquaintance, a mystic, inquires 
about the state of my soul; another, more practical, 
about the state of my pocketbook. The president of 
my club wonders if I will make a speech for the boys! 
A lady, spiritually inclined, hopes I will come to her 
house for tea as often as possible. She wants to have 
my opinion of Jesus Christ, and—what do I think of 
that new medium? ... 

235° 


236 THE FAILURE 


Great God, what have I turned into! What right 
have you people to clutter up my life, steal my time, 
probe my soul, suckle my thoughts, have me for your 
companion, confidant, and information bureau? What 
do you take me for? Am I an entertainer on salary, 
required every evening to play an intellectual farce 
under your stupid noses? Am I a slave, bought and 
paid for, to crawl on my belly in front of you idlers 
and lay at your feet all that I do and all that I know? 
Am I a wench in a brothel who is called upon to lift 
her skirts or take off her chemise at the bidding of the 
first man in a tailored suit who comes along? 

I am a man who would live an heroic life and make 
the world more endurable in his own sight. If, in some 
moment of weakness, of relaxation, of need, I blow off 
steam—a bit of red hot rage cooled off in words—a 
passionate dream, wrapped and tied in imagery—well 
—take it or leave it—but don’t bother me! 

I am a free man—and I need my freedom. I need 
to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my 
despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the pav- 
ing stones of the streets without companions, without 
conversation, face to face with myself, with only the 
music of my heart for company. What do you want 
of me? When I have something to say, I put it in 
print. When I have something to give, I give it. 
Your prying curiosity turns my stomach! Your com- 
pliments humiliate me! You tea poisons me! I owe 
nothing to any one. I would be responsible to God 
alone—if He existed! 


Chapter 33: Glory 


Anp even if I were to succeed—even if I could throw 
into your faces—you who have despised, tortured, 
mocked, reviled, ridiculed, persecuted, ignored me— 
the great work I have dreamed of and longed for, the 
masterpiece that would bring tears to your dry stingy 
eyes, that would close your obscenely leering lips, and 
give a thrill to those sodden peewee hearts of yours 
(which even you have forgotten you have somewhere 
down under your shirt-fronts), if I could in short de- 
feat, vanquish, overwhelm, confound you with a blind- 
ing flash of genius—what could you give or offer me 
in exchange, in what way could you think of reward- 
ing me? 

The history of human sorrow is the history of your 
gratitude and recognition! A fine thing, this glory 
of yours, I must say! 

Imagine! I give you the best of myself—shreds 
of my living flesh, drops of my heart’s blood, the 
innermost secrets of my life! And what do you give 
me? Publicity! Nothing else? You review me in 
your newspapers without understanding what I write. 
You bore me with visits and letters. You point at me 
when I go out for a walk or take a seat in a café 
or in a theater. You force me to write on order, when 
I have nothing to say, when all I can do is repeat my- 

237 


238 THE FAILURE 


self. You worry me for letters, opinions, autographs, 
articles. You-watch—and then you tell—where I go, 
whom I go with, what I do when I get there. You 
stick up my ugly picture everywhere, in books, in news- 
papers, on street corners, on postcards. ‘Then at last 
when I am dead, you rummage through my papers, 
make public property of the intimacies of my life, haul 
out the rags and rubbish of my biography, and finally 
erect an ugly effigy of me in marble or bronze in some 
public square! ‘This is what you offer me! 

Ah, yes! Vanity is mighty, even in the great—I 
know that. But are there not sensitive souls as well? 
Are there not also spirits who feel they are solely and 
purely spirit, who are offended and sullied by all this 
adoration of boneheads? What counts in me—if I 
have anything that counts—is my soul. Why photo- 
graph, why paint, why perpetuate, my body then? If 
I am great it is because I have had the strength to 
live by myself. Why then do you herd about me up- 
setting me with your smells and your stares? If I 
have given you any object lesson, it has been that the 
greatest thing a man can do is to add nature to Nature, 
life to Life, mind to Mind, and not nibble, gnaw, re- 
masticate the words of others: Why then do you waste 
your time trying to explain what I have said instead of 
feeling an impulse to surpass me, destroy me, with 
something better of your own? 

If what I have said is well said, why say it over 
worse? If a person does not understand me, do you 
think you can explain me to him? Do you think you 


ut 

GLORY 239 
‘can explain my words just as I wrote them—designing 
them, engraving them, each and every one, on my most 
effervescent nights of inspiration? } 

Oh, of course, these complaints are ridiculous, espe- 
cially in my mouth. Why seek outside yourself the 
recompense you have within you? Ii the creation of 
your work, the lives of the people born of you, the 
richness of the imagery you invented, are not enough 
to make you satisfied and happy, what do you think 
men can do for you? Can they, the small, the cold, 
the mediocre, give you something your genius could 
not give you? Do your work without thinking of 
them! Throw your creations at people to terrify or 
comfort them,—but then go on creating as long as 
your strength endures! Are you a bricklayer, wait- 
ing for a pay envelope every Saturday night when the 
work is done? Yours are not houses of stone and 
plaster, but mansions of words and blood—neither 
glory nor money can pay for them. 

Neither glory nor money—but the sorrow that is 
sweet, the glory that is silent! These, yes! 

Oh, if only I could be really close to those few—be 
they but three, or four, or seven, or ten—who read 
with their whole souls and not with just their eyes, 
who live with an author and love him as a brother, 
though they have never seen him; who dream of him, 
and speak of him to each other on melancholy Sunday 
walks, nourished by his thoughts, intoxicated by his 
poetry, trembling for his welfare, waiting for a word 
from him as prophets await revelation from God—— 


240 THE FAILURE 


then, yes, then I would be happy; then I would feel 
truly compensated for the silence of the past and the 
insipid stupid clamor of the present! If only I could 
clasp you to my heart—pale, sad, disconsolate soul 
who were the first to read and love my writings—you 
to whom I, alone and before all others, disclosed the 
bitter taste of greatness and the feverish joy of poetry! 
One of your smiles, a quickened beating of your heart, 
a long and happy gaze from your eyes, one of your 
restless dreams, would be a sweeter and more precious 
gift to me than all the parrot chatter of the mobs, all 
the golden wreaths that are flung at me. I do not 
want applause, hurrahs, open mouths, forced praises, 
envious adulation! No! No! None of your “sensa- 
tions,” none of your “furors” for me! Keep your 
brass bands and bass drums, your sopranos, your 
dancers, and your fat tenors for yourselves. Keep 
your acorns for swine, if you have no pearls for heroes! 





Chapter 34: And Supposing— 


AND supposing I had acquired powers? Supposing I 
‘had become a kind of earthly demigod, lord of heaven 
_and earth, conqueror of matter and death, master of 
-men and of minds? What would I have done with my 
powers? To what use would I have put my sover- 
 eignty over the universe? 

| During my mystical straining for a much-hoped-for 
“control,” I hardly ever thought of the afterwards. I 
‘was pursuing “means” without knowing the “ends” 
to which I would use them. I wanted to be God, re- 
-gardless of the fact of my creation and regardless of 
‘the law governing my being. The world was already 
created: well and good! But its law was such that at 
a touch from man everything would fall apart, go to 
pieces. Yes, but then what? 

Able to do everything—absolutely everything! But 
do what? It is impossible to act without first making 
a choice. But how could I choose when the possi- 
bilities of choosing were infinite in number? Choice 
implies preference—this rather than that, a purpose, 
an objective, a heart-yearning toward an ideal believed 
in. Thus fortified, I could annihilate whatever I de- 
spised, perpetuate whatever I loved, direct the course 
of things toward my own goal, model my ideal in the 


responsive clay of the actual. 
241 


242 THE FAILURE 


But I had none of these—neither loves, nor aims, 
nor dreams. Power was my only love, power my only 
aim, power my highest dream. But after power, what? 
I was empty—I felt as empty as a well that seems to 
be bottomless only because it reflects the far-away 
depths of the sky. 

Do what? The answer is difficult enough, even for 
the’ barely superior man, hemmed in on all sides by 
impossibilities and limitations. He knows he cannot 
take this road and that road; but the one that is left 
is shorter and safer. The man for whom there are 
no walls, no barriers, no restrictions anywhere, who is 
theoretically free, theoretically omnipotent, finds the 
question ‘what to do?” a thousand times more enig- 
matic and dangerous. 

Do what? For a mere exercise of powers, one thing 
is as good as another. When a man rises so high that 
he no longer has the needs, interests, loves, truths of a 
human being, everything is on the same plane. The de- 
struction of a race, the creating of a new species, have 
the same value and significance. To give happiness 
to a beggar or reduce an epicure to poverty are, on 
that high level, one and the same thing. Justice and 
injustice, the high and the low, are meaningless distinc- 
tions. ~The moment human values rise above the sphere 
of humanity they blend and disappear. The senti- 
ments a man feels are all products of his impotence. 
Let him acquire absolute power, and he is dehuman- 
ized, superhumanized, yes,—but he becomes insensible, 
a lifeless thing lacking in resilience, will, direction. 


AND SUPPOSING— 243 


‘Dead level: a bird’s nest and a metropolis; a grain 
‘of sand and a peninsula; a fool and a genius—all 
equally respectable, all equally ridiculous! Why 
‘should I care more for one part of reality than for 
‘another, if it’s all mine, all at my disposal, all under 
my control? 
A great part of the pleasure we derive from doing 
_(changing or possessing) something depends on the 
‘effort we expend in doing it. ‘How splendid, how 
‘strong I am! No one else could have done what I 
_have done!” After all our trouble in getting it, the 
object of our desire, though it be a worthless trifle—a 
‘woman, a house, an instant of fame—takes on an in- 
ordinate value for us: it becomes a consoling prize 
-won by the triumphant sweat of our brow. But if 
ability to do involved no fatigue, if an exertion of the 
‘will, the whispering of a command, the winking of an 
eye, is enough to exact the immediate and unlimited 
‘obedience of all things, where is the victory? What is 
the fun? | 
So I think I am lucky on the whole that I did not get 
to be a god, in the stupid, literal way I thought of. I 
would have been unhappier than I am. And perhaps 
the knowledge that I was able to do all things would 
have satisfied me, and I would have done nothing. I 
would have remained motionless and unmoved for ever 
—powerless from too much power. And I should des- 
perately have mourned the anxious days of hoping and 
“waiting that I had lost, days when I could still will 
and choose and pursue an objective. 


244. THE FAILURE 


But all this talk, again! Is it nothing but a post- 
humous consolation for a great failure? What a dog 
aman is! O Adam, kicked out like a thief before you 
have passed the garden gate, you now deny the savor 
and the perfume of the fruit you never tasted? 


| Chapter 35: Am I a Fool? 


Att of my life has been based on the belief that I 


-am a man of genius. But what if I were mistaken? 


What if I were one of the many blind who mistake 


Teminiscences for inspirations, desires for achieve- 


ments? What, in a word, if I were a fool? 

Would that be so strange? 

Would that be the first time a simpleton has imag- 
ined himself a hero, a man of letters a poet, an idiot 
a great man? Is it not possible, a thousand times 


possible, that I am nothing but a frigid reader of 


_books, warmed from time to time by the fires others 


have kindled; witty with the wit of others; mistaking 
the sluggish murmuring of an ambitious mind for the 
gurgling of a full spring ready to burst the rock, water 
the thirsty earth, and reflect the blue sky? 

The more I think of it the more possible, probable, 
natural, it seems to me. What gives me the right to 
believe in myself and in my genius? My achieve- 
ments? But I am the first to deny and scorn them! 
What are my writings but dishwater drained from the 
literary sinks of all the nations; disordered nightmares 
of a friendless pervert, tricks of an intellectual acrobat 
—what else? What else? 

My confidence in being a genius lies in a long and 
futile anticipation of some overwhelming and trium- 

245 


246 THE FAILURE 


phant inspiration; in my eternal spirit of unrest that 
nothing satisfies; in my scorn for all but a celestial 
and Platonic world, which I seem to glimpse at times 
through the clouds of the real world, in moments of 
vision that quickly pass; in the slender, tenuous, fleet- 
ing moods of poetry, the flashing images so swiftly tak- 
ing form in words that often pass through my mind 
when I am thinking without seeing—evenings on my 
way home across my bridges, above me the sky, be- 
neath me the river, both tremulous with myriad stars. 

But what does that prove? Discontent is so often 
an excuse for the most sallow-faced weakness! The 
desire for fame is so very common even among down- 
and-outs! Those brief squalls of imagination never 
become the tornado that sweeps the world and whirls 
men up to the angels and to the stars. All those dis- 
connected, disjointed impressions of mine, all those 
lonesome, homeless idealets, all those squirts of inspi- 
ration that are soon plugged again, all those short- 
lived flashes of wit, all those happy phrases—never 
ordered, organized, correlated, fused in a supreme 
masterpiece, in a work of life complete and full—are 
of ne value whatever! They count for nothing. Much 
more than they will ever be is needed to place a man 
on equal terms with the great creators, and give him 
the right to climb the heights and revile or pity the 
chesty, self-satisfied mortals who are strutting around 
below. Sparks that fly and die, will-o’-the-wisps that 
glow and vanish, phosphorescences that flicker and 
wane, lightning flashes veiled in cloud, lights faint in 


AM I A FOOL? 247 


| the distances, flares that rise and fade in a second— 
these things never make a fire. They are promises, 
temptations, allurements; they are the kindlings ever 
‘renewed of vanity, the meager extenuations of a hell- 
bound sterility, the agonized convulsions of an aborted 
foetus. In them there is no hope. Nay, it were better 
‘if they did not exist! These snorts of insignificance 
“are the brands of infamy and torture that mark the 
halfway man—the man who is neither a perfect beast, 
nor yet a supreme genius, who is neither a plant that 
' vegetates perennially, nor a mind that furiously creates 
-—who is neither a pudgy bale of merchandise, nor a 
pillar of fire leading the peoples. 

I am a mediocre man—the infamous mediocrity I 
‘loathe with all my being. I am that thing which will 
cease to be any thing when my blood no longer flows, 

and my lungs expand with their last breath of air. I 
may have been something once, a long time ago, and 
for the space of a few minutes. I may have spent all 
the genius given me in a single night, in a single round 
of the game I do not know. Here I am now, like a 
Jew, who has eaten the grapes of the Promised Land 
on a day of hurried vintage and now finds himself 
athirst with lips parched in the midst of a sandy desert. 
I am like a man suspended between heaven and earth, 
too fat to soar to the skies, too ethereal to wallow in 
the muck. The dregs of culture, the reminiscences of 
the poets, the swimming and swarming of thoughts in 
my head unfit me for the solid life of a practical me- 
chanic; yet they are not enough to make me worthy of 


248 THE FAILURE 


membership among the kings of intellect. Oh, that I 
had never known—even for an instant, even from afar 
—the impassioned joy of creation! Oh, that I had 
been born and had remained a gentle, harmless, ir- 
responsible imbecile, a modest simpleton without re- 
morse, a good-natured idiot without pretensions. But 
no such luck for me! I know I am a fool. I realize 
I am an idiot—a knowledge and realization that take 
me out of the class of morons who are happy because 
they are perfect morons. I am just superior enough 
to know that I am not superior enough. Possibly with 
the passing years I shall become a more sodden im- 
becile. Then if my happiness is no greater, at least 
my torment will be less. I may hope to turn into a 
tree or a stone, and to come to rest at last in a beatific 
state of complete unconsciousness. 


) Chapter 36: And an Ignoramus 


_ Awp then, after all, let us tell the obnoxious truth: I 
_ am an ignoramus! 

I have rummaged everywhere, I have stirred up 
everything, I have smelled the perfume and plucked 
the petals of all the Knowable. I have beaten my 
head against the stone wall of the Unknowable. 

But I have never gone to the bottom of anything. 

I cannot truthfully say that I am master of any 

science, art, or philosophy. I have no specialty, I 

have no “field,” which, small though it be—a diminu- 

_ tive garden plot—I can call my own, in which I can 
look down on any one who gets under my feet. 

I may give others, many people in fact, the impres- 
sion that I am one of those amphibious, castrated, 
emasculated individuals who are called (with undue 
disrespect to agriculture) “cultivated men.” I have 

read a book or two, in fact very many, perhaps too 
many books; and yet I may say that I have never 
read anything. My mind is filled with an army of 
names, with a horde of titles; it is a warehouse of 
notes; but the books I know inside and out, in word 
and in spirit, the books I have read, re-read, and in- 
wardly lived, are very, very few indeed—and I am 
ashamed to admit it; though I am not the only un- 
249 


250 THE FAILURE 


fortunate who has wasted his time writing words in 
the sand which a gust of wind will wipe out. The 
famous “man of one book” is a dismal and dangerous 
customer: but the man of too many books is a cess- 
pool that keeps only the worst of the sewage that 
comes into it. [amsucha man. Mea culpa! 

I was a born self-teacher; and the self-taught man 
is great only when he succeeds in maturing and re- 
straining himself. I am the encyclopedist, the man of 
dictionaries and textbooks; and the encyclopedist is 
indeed wonderful if he can manage to bind the dried 
and faded facts of varied readings into sheaves, with 
the iron bands of fundamental principles. 

I can dazzle not a few with my knowledge of bibli- 
ography. I can hold my own in a talk with special- 
ists. But in five minutes, or in five days, I have run 
dry: my pack is emptied. I have other bags at home, 
but they are not good measure. They are always short 
by a peck or more, and what is there has not all been 
sifted. 

Whichever way I turn I am not the layman, nor yet 
am I of the guild. No legitimate chair is accorded me 
among the learned: I have never been labeled. I am 
a man without a place; yet I can stay in any spot I 
choose till they put me out. 

A wandering Jew of knowledge, I have settled in no 
country, I have gained residence in no city. Lashed 
by the demon of curiosity I have explored rivers and 
wilds without plan and without patience—always in a 
hurry, ever on the wing. I have much information 


AND AN IGNORAMUS | 251 


but few foundations. I am like a king who rules over 


a vast empire of maps. 

I have begun everything and finished nothing. I am 
no sooner launched on a certain road than I take the 
first turn to the right, or to the left, thence branching 
into by-paths that lead to other by-paths, till I find 
myself on another highway. 

When people marvel at my learning, my erudition, 
I feel like laughing in their faces. I alone know how 
many appalling voids there are in my brain. [ alone, 


- who have longed to know everything, know how limited 


- the field of my knowledge is. The periods of antiquity, 


the dead languages of the great nations, the sciences 
of light, of movement, of life, are almost closed books 


- to me. I know their vocabulary and several of their 


paragraphs; I have an idea of their whole; but I can- 
not go ahead on my own legs. I am ignorant, im- 
measurably, hopelessly ignorant. The worst of it is 
that mine is not the simple natural ignorance of the 
woodsman or the farmer, which is not incompatible 
with freshness and serenity, nor even with a certain 
canny originality. No, I am just an ignoramus, a 
fool who has buried himself in books, a library-donkey, 
who has learned enough to lose all spontaneity, with- 
out acquiring any real wisdom. 

And yet I have had the impudence to want to be a 
teacher, to become a professor overnight, to be an 
“inspirer,” and “guide” and “beacon” to others. I 
have written books with footnotes and bibliographies. 
I have passed judgment on the monographs of other 


252 THE FAILURE 


people. I have given the impression of mastering my > 
subjects, and of knowing what I was talking about. 
I have attained no mean reputation as a “scholar,” a 
“plodder,” a ‘man who takes notes,” who is “well- 
posted.” How great must be the ignorance around 
me, if I have gotten away with that reputation! I can 
tell for my part how easily won is that false fame 
which certain “scholars” wheedle out of a blind and 
lazy public at so little cost! Knowing the heads and 
tails of my own “learning,” knowing how light, how 
flimsy the curtain of my erudition is, knowing how 
meager the preparation behind my cocksureness, how 
great the timidity underneath my rashness, I am 
ashamed of myself, I am ashamed of others; and I 
feel impelled to confess aloud to those who would listen 
to me. 

How can anything good or great come from a man 
so sunk in the slime of ignorance? Knowledge is 
Power! What wonder if my power remains—oh, tor- 
tured memory, oh, burning remorse—in the ash-can of 
unrealized desires? And whom shall I blame for this? 

Myself, always myself, only myself! If I had been 
a little weaker (weak enough not to dream), or a 
little stronger (strong enough to conquer), I would 
not now be abasing myself before men whom I despise! 


Chapter 37: 1 Do Not Know Men 


IGNORANT not only of things, but of men! 

What was my life’s great plan? To influence my 
own species, change it fundamentally from beast to 
man, from man to god, begin a new era in the his- 
tory of the world, date from me the mystic hejira of 
humanity. | 

But to influence men one must know them; to 
change them one must get inside them with love and 
sympathy. Without daily and direct contact with all 
of them—with townsman and rustic, with schoolboy 
and factory hand, with the woman who hopes and the 
woman who suffers, with the kings of the earth and 
the beggars of the gutter—you cannot tear them from 
life as it is and push them up toward something better. 
Whosoever would find a way to their hearts, discover 
the deeper springs of their conduct, must know their 
most hidden thoughts, their most vital needs, their 
best secreted choices. We have the man of the scien- 
tists whom psychology puts before us in books of three 
hundred pages, or in definitions of thirty words; we 
have the man we see about us, a man all exterior, all 
front, who adapts himself to others on his own account 
to make a good impression on his fellow men. This 
man is easily recognized; you can draw his picture 
with a few strokes of the pen. But the true man, the 

253 


254 THE FAILURE 


real, the concrete man, is not to be found in the philoso- 
pher’s dummy, nor yet in the disguises worn by our 
friends. The apostle, the prophet, the Messiah, must 
know the man that hides behind his words and his 
make-up. He must know—not man, but men, this man 
and that man—thousands of men, individually, one by 
one, in all their intimate aspects emotional and mental. 

I did not know them; and so I was bound to fail. 
If we refuse to listen to people, we cannot expect them 
to listen to us. I was a stranger to men and men do 
not understand the language of strangers. They can- 
not love some one who has not a terrible love for them. 
Humanity is a woman, drawn only to those who adore 
her or frighten her. 

For this reason I too tried to know men. I tried 
to be much with them, take them by the arm, listen 
to what they said, note their involuntary self-revela- 
tions. 

I was willing to try everything. I visited the poor 
in their hovels, to record their indictments of society 
at first hand. I stopped by the man with the shovel, 
with the plane, with the hammer, to enter into the 
spirit of his work, divine his conception of happiness. 
I followed strangers along crowded streets, to learn 
their mode of life. I even consented to frequent well- 
mannered and fashionable people and I shivered with 
cold and with rage in their overheated drawing rooms. 
I talked with waiters and baggage men. I drew out 
children and their mamas. I loitered about churches 
and eavesdropped on black-robed women as they raised 


I DO NOT KNOW MEN 255 


their childish prayers to the Madonna. I sought out 
_ priests in the rectories and monks in the monasteries. 
I went to the classrooms of great scholars and to the 
~ studios of unknown artists. I studied the ledgers of 
merchants and exchanged confidences with their clerks. 
I made harlots tell me stories of their lives. I breathed 

the heavy air of cheap dives and eating-houses to hear 
the talk of people I wanted to redeem. 

I tried to force my way into the lives of others. I 
typed with stenographers. I took notes with students. 
I dissected corpses with surgeons. I made hay with 
peasants. I drove donkeys with street peddlers. I 
gossiped at dinner with dukes and marquises. I used 
the plumbline with bricklayers and wielded the pick-ax 
with laborers. 

And yet it was all in vain. I drew nigh unto you, 
O men, and yet I do not love you. I cannot love you. 
You disgust me. You revolt me. Since I did not love 
you, I could not know you; and not knowing you I 
could not save you. I was alone in your midst, all to 
myself; and you left me to myself. So my words now 
leave you silent, and my promises do not stir you. 
You were right then. You are right now. 

Like all who have tried to change your destinies, I 
feel conflicting emotions within me. I approach you 
to know you better; but no sooner do I begin to know 
you than I am disgusted. To rid myself of this dis- 
gust I ought to change you; but I cannot change you, 
since I know not how you are made. This vicious 
circle, a girdle of despair, has strangled most reformers 


256 THE FAILURE 


in the end. We all have an immense love for hu- 
manity when we are alone in our own houses. But 
let us go out and rub elbows with Peter and Judas, 
with men who walk and talk and have their being, and 
our love changes to scorn and hate. We go back to 
Our corners again and, lo, in the desert our love 
blooms again for all men, even for Peter and Judas. 

Such is my case. I love you, O men, as few have 
loved you. All my inner being is suffused with this 
deep affection. I would have you bigger, happier, 
purer, nobler, mightier than you are. My fondest 
dream has beer to be your real, your greatest re- 
deemer. 

But mine is a ee love, a love hidden, strange, 
bizarre. I try to express it in words and the words 
freeze on my lips. I open my arms to embrace you 
and my ardor becomes loathing. I feel the warmth of 
your breath, and my heart is poisoned. Mine is a love 
that is mine, peculiarly, intimately my own. It is a 
lonely, a selfish, an impotent love. It should burn 
more brightly at sight of my loved one. Instead it 
dies down, and goes out. It should express itself in 
loving deeds, in kindly words. Instead it rebukes, it 
scourges, it reviles. My love is a love of slaps and 
sputa. You cannot understand, O men, you cannot 
accept, such love. 

In moments like these, in moments of pitiless frank- 
ness, I cannot reproach you. The fault is in me, in my 
coldness, which keeps me from losing myself in you, 
as a lover melts in his loved one. You sense the mock- 


I DO NOT KNOW MEN 257 


ery in my smile. You see my fist clench as I shake 
your hand. Thou, too, humanity, art of the violent; 


and I have not known how to love thee or to chastise 
thee enough. 

I have nothing but intentions without power within 
me. It is my lot to suffer a self-inflicted torture with 


‘no right to ask you for a word of comfort. I am a 


little Prometheus, harboring the vulture of remorse 
in my vitals because with the fire I have stolen 1 can 
burn only myself. 


Chapter 38: Inspiration 


Ou, that the deep and majestic stream of inspiration 
might burst forth in me like a water jet, long and 
forcibly repressed! Oh, that ideas might spout in me 
like fantastic fountains mounting to the skies! Oh, 
that images, and thoughts, and sentiments—and words 
of blessed finality!—might fall like rain on my heart, 
and on the hearts of men, cooling, consoling, soften- 
ing, rousing to fertility! Oh, that my mind might 
suddenly burst into flame like a field of brushwood 
and stubble, like a thicket of dry wood. Oh, that my 
thoughts might illumine the heavens like sputtering 
rockets; that my words might burn like fire; that 
ideas might fly from my racing pen like sparks from 
a smoldering log stirred by the tongs. Oh—and above 
all—that I might enlighten, and warm, the minds of 
all men! 

Why am I denied this joy, this happiness, this bounty 
—I, who have asked for it, waited for it, yearned for 
it, prayed for it? 

Oh, if some day, after so many years of impatient 
waiting, of frantic invocation, I could hear roaring in 
me a torrent of new words, feel surging over me a 
wave never felt before! Oh, that, instead of writing 


the same old things, of stringing together the same old 
258 


i | 
INSPIRATION 259 


phrases, of crawling along the same old paths with the 
‘same old tired and patched-up thoughts, new unex- 
pected truths should rise to my lips—marvelous images, 
rhythms, harmonies, and passions, as yet undiscovered, 
unknown, unfelt by any man! 

How many times at night, by the red flickering light 
‘of a candle, or in the calm white glow of a shaded 
lamp have I waited for the coming of the divine hour 
—as, at midnight, the ever-disappointed lover awaits 
the coming of the girl who has at last promised to be 
his! And at such times I would tear the white sheets 
‘of paper—half covered with scribbles—one after an- 
other into bits. I would rub my eyes with my hands 
and stupidly gaze at some stupid object. Half asleep 
I would draw profiles of monsters and old men with 
beards. Then I would destroy more paper. And I 
would curse myself, jump to my feet, kick back my 
chair, throw down my pen, and roll about on my bed, 
unable to sleep, unable to dream, unable to forget. 

Thus it was a hundred, a thousand times; my mind 
remained ever hard and perverse, my soul ever cold 
and dead, my paper ever white before me—and fame 
as far away as before. No! Genius had I none. 
There was no answering echo in the Infinite. Heroic 
frenzy refused to awaken in me; darkness, silence, 
torture! 

What would I not have done, what would I not do, 
to be shaken, shocked, aroused for a moment, to re- 
ceive, suddenly, the mysterious dictation of a Truth 
revealed! 


260 THE FAILURE 


An inspiration, whether of God or of the Devil, so 
it be a power greater than I am, saner than I am, 
more far-seeing, more mad, that speaks through my 
mouth, writes with my hand, thinks with my thought! 


Chapter 39: My Debts 


But God refuses to speak through my mouth—TI shall 

‘never write a holy scripture. And the Devil, who 
is fond of light literature, keeps clawing me down 
toward a nether Hell of horrors. 

But—I am afraid that some one will speak through 
‘my mouth all the same. As yet, I do not know my- 
self. I have hacked my spirit into bits, until now my 
soul is in pieces, shattered, lifeless, its fibers tangled 
and exposed, like the pictures in books of anatomy. I 
‘do not know myself. I do not recognize my own voice. 
When I am speaking I do not know whether the words 
come from my own brain or from some hideous 
prompter crouching behind my back. 

I feel I am a debtor. 

All men are debtors, though few of us admit our 
debts, and fewer still have any intention of paying 
them. 

The history of the human mind is one long record 
of protested checks. 

Like the savages of the South Sea, we devour our 
fathers; but we are not always as successful as they 
in digesting them. 

Yet after each feast we recognize the vomit as our 
own . 


I feel infinitely in debt. With Saint Paul I can say: 
261 


262 THE FAILURE 


“T am debtor to the Greeks, and to the Romans, to 
the Hebrews and to the Gentiles.” I could add an- 
other half-dozen peoples and still the account would 
not be closed. I am like the men of the Golden Age— 
I do not know mine from thine. I have not stolen 
with the deliberate idea of stealing. I dislike plagiar- 
ism—only the very poor and the very rich can indulge 
in that. I have snuffed at everything, I have absorbed 
everything that has come under my hand, and now I 
am unable to divide the goods and tell which is whose. 
I am steeped in other people’s theories. I am stuffed 
with other people’s books, articles, phrases, images. I 
am a product of others,—whereas I would like to be 
a genius, and myself. 

This uncertainty is a torment to me. I would like 
to know what I really am, to what extent the things 
I have done are mine. I would like to give to others 
after having stolen from them. I would like to add 
something to the civilization that has been my sus- 
tenance. I would like to find myself in the general 
mixture; settle my accounts, get away with my own 
belongings—though they weigh but an ounce. I put 
my name under the titles of my books; but I would 
like to know just what I have borrowed, just what is 
really mine. I am so completely plastered with other 
people that I don’t know where my own limbs begin. 
I am singing in a chorus and cannot distinguish the 
sound of my own voice. 

The situation disgusts me. This communism is a 
bore. This suspicion of theft troubles my conscience. 


MY DEBTS 263 


I prefer to owe no man anything. I would rather do 
without than have to be grateful to my creditors. I 
fnsist upon being myself, only myself, individual, in- 
‘dependent, without ties, the sole and lawful proprietor 
of myself and all that belongs to me. I am Robinson 
Crusoe without an island. 

Whereas, at present, when I re-read what I have 
‘written, I am always afraid of finding that I have 
been trespassing on the property of others. That word 
there—may I not have taken it from such and such 
an author? This image here—may it not be a remi- 
‘niscence of another? This idea may be a disguise and 
a development of some one else’s idea. This char- 
acter may have been suggested to me by some novel, 
or possibly by some living person. This joke I may 
have heard in conversation with a friend. The shades 
of the living and the dead crowd about me; and I 
would like to throw back at them all their loans— 
principal and interest alike. 

Many people have no such scruples. I envy them. 

I do not want to take anything, not even from 
reality. I wish I were a spider drawing the threads 
of my work from my own insides. The bee steals its 
honey from the flowers! How odious! I would like 
to be indebted to myself and to myself alone. 

Not even the skies, the faces of men, the trees of 
the woods, the houses of the cities, should give me 
anything. I cannot do without them. And yet I am 
ashamed to find them in me, in my writings. It sad- 
dens me to think that probably I should be unable 


264 THE FAILURE 


to say anything without that sky, that face, that tree, 
that house. I wish I could make a clearing about my 
mind to see what it can do when it stands all alone. 
An absurd thought, a ridiculous desire, an impossible 
undertaking! Forget it! But I cannot help feeling 
that I am the anti-debtor par excellence, anti-debtor 
to the point of madness. 

But there is worse yet! I am afraid at times that I 
owe even what I may call my talent to entirely ex- 
traneous things—material things, into the bargain. 
My wit is keener after two cups of coffee. I am a 
better reasoner after a pot of tea. A few glasses of 
champagne add to my gifts of gay paradox. A climb 
to a hilltop makes me a more moral man. If a café 
orchestra, a military band, a movement from a sym- 
phony, give me a poetical flight, or suggest thoughts, 
images, sentences I would not have thought of by my- 
self, I must suspect to my shame that I am only a 
thinking machine which gives out what is put into it, 
which cannot work without fuel and oil. I must fear 
it is not I who think and dream, but the coffee, the 
tea, the wine, the oxygen, the music that are dream- 
ing and thinking in me. A stupid fear, perhaps! 
Many people drink and hear what I drink and hear, 
without ever doing what I do. Never mind! These 
red and white liquids I pour into my stomach do have 
an effect on me. Without them I would not think what 
I think nor write what I write. It angers, it irritates 
me to realize that these extraneous material substances 
are parts of my inspiration, collaborators in my work. 


MY DEBTS 265 


-To owe something to Shakespeare is a remorse. But 
to owe more to a ham sandwich is a disgrace. 

I do not know how many people suffer this dam- 
nable torment of not being able to find themselves in 
their own personality. The Greeks with their “know 
thyself,” and Ibsen with his “be thyself,” trouble me 
beyond words. How can I know my real self if I can- 
not identify myself, if I cannot isolate the irreducible 
center, the ultimate residuum, of my individuality? 

I am not looking for man, nor yet for a man; I 
want myself, just my Self! Who is this Self? And 
where is he? And what does he really think? Yet 
with this Self, bound, dressed, wrapped, cluttered up 
by others—I must live, and always live as a stranger. 
_ This—but not only this—is the torture of my hard 
life. 


Chapter 40: The Clown 


RATHER than die of hunger and cold like an alley cat, 
I will take up any trade. I will pick rags in the streets 
with a pack on my back. I will stand in front of 
churches and restaurants begging pennies in the name 
of God. I will be a cleaner in a public latrine. I will 
lead a dancing bear through country towns. If, really, 
I can find nothing else to do I will become a lawyer. 

But there is one trade I will never follow—no, not 
even if I am ordered to, with a revolver at my back. 
I will never be a literary buffoon. I will never be a 
“clown author.” I will never be the man who writes 
to amuse people, to pass time pleasantly for the bored 
and the lazy. I will never be a contemptible wretch 
who from January 1st to January 1st invents stories, 
manufactures plots, thinks up adventures, rehashes his- 
tories, works out novels, writes short stories, rigs up 
plays to make people who pay and applaud him laugh 
or cry. 

These public mountebanks may prate of beauty, pre- 
tend to turn up their noses at the public, hide in their 
vest pockets the money they get for the fun they 
provide. It does them no good. They may like it 
or lump it; but they are prostitutes serving the Sov- 
ereign Mob that would forget its shameless day in an 


evening of pleasure. They are the hired clowns of 
266 


THE CLOWN 267 


“the People; jesters and fools to drummers and sales- 
men who would snuff a book between puffs of cigar 
smoke. A peddler of fiction is a bootblack of the idle 
rich. He is a panderer offering the sham life of others 
to people who have no life of their own. What is 
the difference, in effect, between a cigar and a story, 
a drama and a bottle of wine? Smoking and reading 
you pass time more easily. A play, like a good drunk, 
takes you off into another world where you see things 
and dream things that do not exist. 

There is, to be sure, one difference: Art. You can, 
I grant you, say many beautiful things this way, and 
there are books of this kind that may live long in 
the hearts of men. But underlying them all is the 
notion that men, above everything else, must be 
amused and made to laugh—that a good story will 
keep them awake, and quicken their breathing, till 
you can reach their minds with a good idea and fool 
them into swallowing a great truth. 

Why should I care whether they are amused or not? 
I refuse to play buffoon to any one! I assert that all 
writers of novels and stories and plays have been buf- 
foons, paid to tickle the imaginations of men, as fid- 
dlers tickle their ears and women the rest of them. 

Most men are children, even at sixty, and they need 
these time-killers; they need fiction and adventure; 
they need the picturesque and the pathetic. Authors, 
even though not quite children themselves, have been 
ready to fill the bill, getting down on all fours on the 
floor, blowing a tin horn, and straddling a broom-stick. 


268 THE FAILURE 


I am sorry to say that among them have been men I 
admire considerably: Homer and Cervantes, Shake- 
speare and Dostoievski. They, like other buffoons, 
have asked: “What can I do for you to-day?” When 
I read them myself and enjoy them, I too am a cap- 
tious child always eager to hear a story from mama! 

I realize that I am hard to please—a bore and a 
Puritan. These men have brightened our childhood. 
Their people have walked with us and talked to us 
on many an evening of sadness and lust in our boy- 
hood years. Who would have believed that they were 
just buffoons? Even I, when not obsessed with wrath 
that makes me vomit upon them, doubt my own words 
and almost believe I must be out of my mind, unjust, 
unkind. 

But no, I am right. What is a clown? A clown is 
a man who amuses men. And how does he amuse 
them? Often by making them laugh at the misery 
of others; but at any rate, by using their unhappi- 
ness and their misfortunes as a means of arousing not 
compassion and horror, but mere curiosity. The sad 
case of two lovers who die before marrying is sure 
to keep off ten yawns an hour. The desperation of 
a mother, the infidelity of a wife, the vengefulness of 
a murderer, the despondency of a failure, the gener- 
osity of a martyr, the disaster of an innocent—is there 
anything in the world that is not seized upon by the 
professional story-teller and made his own, to be ex- 
posed at one-fifty a peep to the eyes of boys and girls 
who have more vital energy than they can find oppor- 


THE CLOWN 269 


‘tunity to use, and to papas and mamas who would 
enjoy a laugh at Don Quixote’s expense and a tear or 
two over poor King Lear? 

The object of all their art—and sometimes it is a 
great art—is to interest indolent readers or spectators, 
transport them outside their petty, narrow, personal 
lives, unenlightened, trivial, humiliating, burdensome. 
Give the word buffoon its highest, noblest, most heroic 
meaning, if you will! But let me apply it to those 
who seek some recompense for amusing by writing, 
though their reward be a dead branch of laurel, an 
epigraph on a tombstone, a round of applause in a 
theater, or ten thousand dollars cash. 

Do you think such things befit men conscious of 
their place in this mysterious and awe-inspiring uni- 
verse? Do you think that the few of us who can see 
four spans farther than these children and know the 
end awaiting us if we do not courageously conquer 
destiny—upbuilding a purer life against the menace 
of ultimate Nothingness—do you think, I ask, that we 
should encourage such childishness and fatuity in men, 
stopping them in front of cardboard theaters to watch 
the antics of dreamland puppets, and listen to the joys 
and woes of silly phantoms? 

Why all this misplaced compassion? Why waste 
so much genius in amusing and soothing men? How 
much finer, how much more dangerous it would be 
to startle them from their slumbers, bring them face 
to face with the darkness about us, dangle them head 
down into the Abyss of Nothing, forcing them to rouse 


270 THE FAILURE 


themselves, know themselves, become sadder but 
nobler in the face of a universe which now barely con- 
cedes them life! 

Away with novels, stories, legends, tragedies! If 
you’re bored, there’s bridge! Or try a bath in the salt 
sea! Let genius no longer be used to furnish enter- 
tainment for idlers, to reanimate people who have 
once been or will never be—but rather to proclaim new, 
and better lives, to prepare an earth that will know 
no sorrow save the sorrows of the spirit, and bring 
forth men bent not on forgetting, but on remembering 
and promising! 


Chapter 41: Certainty 


I po not ask for bread, for fame, for pity. 

I do not ask women for kisses, bankers for money, 
“seniuses” for praise. These things I can do without, 
or I can steal them, or earn them. What I ask for 
and plead for humbly, on bended knee, with all the 
fervor and all the passion of my soul is: a little cer- 
tainty. Something I can believe in with surety, just 
one, small, tiny atom of unquestionable T ruth! 

In the name of all you hold most precious, by your 
life, by your latest love, by your favorite dream—tell 
me, is there one among you who has what I seek? Is 
there one among you who is certain, who is sure— 
who knows that he lives and moves in Truth? If there 
be one such, and if he prove to be not mistaken or 
misled (and as generous as he is fortunate! ), let him 
tell me what he knows! Let him tell me what his 
Truth is! I will hear it under oath of secrecy! I 
will pay him any price he asks. I will pay him when 
and where he pleases. 

I must have a little certainty—I need something 
that is true. I cannot do without it. I cannot live un- 
less I have it. I ask for nothing else. I ask for noth- 
ing more. A large order, a most unusual request— 


that I know! But I must make this request at any 
271 


242 THE FAILURE 


cost—I must have it granted in any possible way. 
If my life matters to any one in this world, let him 
give me what I seek, no matter what the charge! 

I have never sought anything else. From my 
earliest days I have lived for nothing else. I have 
knocked at all doors, I have scanned all eyes, 1 have 
watched all lips, I have fathomed a thousand, yes, 
ten thousand hearts. In vain! In vain have I thrown 
myself into life, even to the point of drowning and 
nausea; and in vain, ever in vain, have I ruined my 
eyes reading the old and the latest books. In vain 
have I deafened my brain with the wranglings of num- 
berless rival philosophers. In vain, eternally in vain, 
have I turned inward upon myself, harkening to inner 
voices, humbly preparing the way for the great reve- 
Jation. But nothing! Absolutely nothing came, and 
no one answered me! 

No one, at least, has given me an answer that sat- 
isfied my longing, relieved me of further need of 
asking. Nothing has calmed my all too impatient 
hunger, or slaked my all too burning thirst. Not all 
these efforts of mine, not all my trials and struggles 
were wholly wasted: many obstructions fell, many 
walls were torn down and leveled—some gently 
crumbling like caving sand, others with a thunderous 
roar, as if a new earth were bursting from the old 
earth. But behind every partition, emptiness; beyond 
every wall, darkness; and an echo so perverse that to 
every “‘yea” of hope there answered a faint but never- 
ending “nay”! 


CERTAINTY 273 


It can never be said that I lacked courage. I re- 
member long clear nights that I spent, awake, out of 
doors—the illusion of the Infinite in my soul—over 
my head such skies and such stars as give health to 
the body and cleanse the mind of the bestial colors 
of day. . . . Then I looked into the microscope—and 
what did I see? Just what I see daily with my naked 
eyes—tiny creatures in a tiny world—devouring one 
another! 

There came men of faith and men sworn to pre- 
serve the Faith. But though they reasoned with me 
they could not give me the faith that was in their 
words. For where there were words there were no 
deeds; and in their words my accurst intelligence dis- 
cerned deceit, and pride, and illusion, and ignorance, 
and sham, and interest, and calculation—all that would 
make of God the servant of man. 

Nor did I have better luck with the philosophers. 
The best of them were grammarians who sharpened 
and sharpened their sickles till the grass was stand- 
ing dead and dry in the fields and they were not yet 
ready to begin the harvest. And the rest were poets 
who had missed their calling, fanatics without charm 
who spent days and nights over plans of celestial 
utopias where no one could live, building tall and 
costly palaces with imposing fronts, but no walls or 
rooms behind. 

And no truth anywhere! No truth, I mean, of 
the kind that strikes one prostrate to earth like a flash 
of divine lightning from on high, and illumines every- 


274 THE FAILURE 


thing, inside and out with unextinguishable brilliancy 
—man and his image! 

No certainty anywhere! Everything its pro and its 
con—each con its pro, and each pro its con! Ideas, 
I could see, were all diamonds and prisms, four-faced 
godheads, sphinxes with a thousand answers to every 
ten questions. Never can we say of a thing: “It is 
thus and so and not otherwise.” No problem can be 
answered in one way, and in that way only. Every 
man who speaks has a right on his side and the man 
who contradicts him has his right also, and so with 
the man who contradicts both the first and the second; 
and so with a possible fourth. With each in his turn 
we have to agree. Even the lunatic has his “case” and 
we must hear it patiently. 

A skeptic, I? No—alas! Not even a skeptic. The 
skeptic is in luck. He at least has one faith left— 
faith that certainty is impossible. 

A skeptic can be at his ease and, if he likes, dog- 
matic. But not I! I do not even believe in the use- 
lessness of research. I am not even sure that certainty 
is non-existent. There is always a chance that truth 
may be found. There is always the chance that some 
one may have it. 

Why not I? What does it mean that I have not 
found it, that I am not the one who has it? Now, at 
any rate, I refuse to go on living thus. I refuse to 
be torn as I now am torn between doubt and nega- 
tion. I refuse to be tormented by this endless yearn- 
ing, crushed by this ever-recurring defeat. I want 


CERTAINTY 275 


some one to help me, I want him who has found his 
peace to share a little of his peace with me. 

But not words, understand! Not tricks! No fairy 
stories! No “fond hopes”! No female chatter! 

I must have a certainty that is certain—just one; 
a belief that cannot be shaken—just one; a truth that 
is true, be it ever so small—just one! 

A truth that will let me touch the innermost sub- 
stance of the world—the last and most solid prop of 
reality, a truth that so firmly lays hold on the mind 
that to conceive its opposite is impossible; a truth that 
is knowledge, perfect, definite, authentic, undebatable 
knowledge. 

Without this truth I cannot live. If no one has 
pity on me, if no one can answer me, in death will I 
seek the blessedness of True Light, or the peace of 
Eternal Nothingness. 


Chapter 42: Let Misfortune Come! 


THERE come moments when I feel well, when I seem 
happy, when I have the cowardly courage to forget 
the degradation and torture of my life. And at such 
times, slyly, slowly, softly,—lest conscience hear!—I 
let myself down into the comforts and consolations and 
indulgences of your fat, lazy, peaceful, meaningless 
lives, O detestable, contemptible comrades mine! 

A shameful thing to confess! But I confess it, 
shuddering! 

I am not made for joy! I must not seek comforts. 
Woe unto me if I let myself fall into the warm and 
languorous embrace of pleasure! To be true to the 
principle of my soul’s being, to the vows I made when 
I was born again, to the pact I signed with life and 
death, I cannot dissolve, I cannot be soaked up, in the 
milky pap of common everyday comfort. 

In my life there is too much regularity, too much 
peace, too much comfort already. While the Son of 
Man has no place to lay His head, I have a flat 
with five rooms in an old palace. Near it is a park of 
beauties that are ever new. The sun shines in at 
my windows. I have comfortable beds to sleep in, 
luxurious chairs to sit in, deep plates to eat from. I 
am poor, yet I have an abundance. Every day a thick 


soup steams on my table, and a crisp white bread 
276 


LET MISFORTUNE COME 277 


‘crunches under my teeth. The world has at last a 
faint smile for the youth who once chose to flee from 
it like a disinherited son! 

Nowadays every phase of my life is well ordered, 
smooth running. I go to bed early and sleep until 
morning. My stomach is in top form. I have friends 
who are fond of me. Women come my way. ‘The 
great and the small lift their hats when I go by. All 
is well and I lack nothing. All is well, I lack nothing 
—in the eyes of the man who looks only at the out- 
side, and judges by his own measure. 

But it was not for this that I came into the world. 
It was not for this that I consented to live. It was 
not for this that over twenty long years I have been 
torturing, flagellating my spirit as the mad monks of 
old tortured and lashed their breasts and shoulders. 
I have stayed in the world because the world is more 
fearful than Nothingness. I accepted life because life 
is more painful than death. I have stabbed, flayed, 
hammered myself, because agony alone begets truth, 
because the offspring of the mind is not born without 
anguish. All music is but sadness. And the bottom 
of the Bitter Cup is the only joy which brings not 
loathing. 

I have no desire to be content, peaceful, happy, 
rich. I call all misfortunes down on my head! I in- 
voke disasters without end upon the pathway of my 
life! May fevers make my teeth chatter! May pov- 
erty empty my house! May love betray me! May 

my friends desert me! May vermin slaver my flesh! 


278 THE FAILURE 


May delirium and madness rule my brain! May 
enemies persecute and assail me! May all my dear 
ones die at my side, stricken with sudden death! 
May all the sorrows of the world be mine! 

But on this one condition: that it be proven whether 
I am a man or a good-for-nothing, whether I am held 
upright by a mind or only by a backbone. My hair 
turns gray. My cheeks grow flabby. My forehead 
wrinkles. My eyes run with tears. But what does 
it matter? ‘The flowers I seek grow only in hopeless 
solitude—flowers that never fade, and never droop 
their heads, flowers enduring forever in eternal fra- 
grance! 


Chapter 43: The Disintegration of the 
Body 


Nor only is my mind failing. My body too is going 
to the bad. 
Too long have I gone about crying: Spirit, Spirit! 
I have given no thought to my body. I have kept it 
in check with spur and bit, like a restive stallion. I 
hoped to break it in. I counted on mastering it, grip- 
ping it by its mind, taming it without even looking it 
once in the eye. Now it is taking its revenge. I feel 
that the end is drawing near. ‘This frame work of 
lanky bones with a scanty wrapping of flesh shows 
signs of collapsing—dust unto dust, dust under dust. 
Especially my eyes. I hurt them while I was still 
a boy, on long nights of reading by candle light, or 
under the steadier but fainter glow of a little oil 
lamp, which almost always burned lower and lower 
and finally went out at midnight, leaving me in the 
dark with the filthy smell of the wick still smoking 
from some smoldering filament. I hurt them on winter 
afternoons of lingering twilights (what a bore to stop 
in the middle of an interesting page and leave my 
warm chair to get a match!). I hurt them in the 
dark reading rooms of antiquated libraries—where I 
would read and read as long as I could guess at the 
shape of a letter or write and write as long as my 
279 


280 THE FAILURE 


pen could feel its way across the sheet of unruled 
paper. Often in the morning, when the first rays of 
dawn filtered through my shutters, I would pick up 
the book I had been forced to put down the night 
before, and read until sheer disgust for the animal 
warmth of my sheets would drive me out into the cold 
streets to my daily tasks. 

Straining in the red murky lamplight of evenings 
and in the faint whiteness of dawns, the pupils of 
my eyes dilated beyond measure and the lids grew in- 
flamed. My eyes ached all day long and spilled tears 
down my cheeks. I paid no attention then; but for 
some time past I have not been able to tell what is on 
top of a hill, nor recognize a well-known face a few 
steps away. 

My eyes are not good. I can see only things that 
are close at hand and then only with the help of very 
strong glasses. The bright colors of the world, its 
finer and more delicate outlines, are lost for me. 
Everything is blurred as though draped in a mist—a 
mist which is light and transparent, for the present, 
but which is everywhere and never lifts. At night all 
distant figures lose their sharpness. I might mistake 
a man for a woman, a stationary lantern for a streak 
of red light, a boat coming down the river for a blotch 
of black on its current. People’s faces are spots of 
white to me; windows in house fronts spots of black; 
trees are dark solid streamers rising from darkness. 
Only three or four of the brightest stars shine in the 
sky for me. 


THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE BODY 281 


And, oh, that this much would last! But I am afraid 
I shall go blind. I am afraid that I shall see less and 
less; and in the end—nothing! It terrifies me to think 
what my life will be then. I have no resources out- 
side my mind. My best friends are among the Dead. 
I have no pleasure outside of books. And—unable to 
read! Never again to see any of those beautiful let- 
ters, round, italic, or Elzevirian, that have given me 
such great joys, taught me all I know, expressed for 
others all that is best in me. Dependent upon the 
kindness of people, reading through eyes of strangers, 
at the mercy of the preference, the patience, the com- 
passion of others! Around me, darkness—total dark- 
ness! Blackness, obscurity everywhere—for ever! I, 
alone with my thoughts, alone in the dark—until 
death! 

I never really believe this; yet I think of it from 
time to time as though it were a certainty, fixed in 
advance, a question of days or of years. I try to live, 
in my imagination, the wretched life I foresee. Some- 
times, when a street is deserted before me, I shut my 
eyes and walk ahead. I hesitate. I veer from side to 
side. I touch the plastered walls and the ornaments 
of the houses. I study the echo of my footsteps on 
the pavements. Could I get home, if I tried? Then 
I hear a noise: a carriage, some one coming! I open 
my eyes again. The world is not lost. I can still 
see! Iam saved! I close my eyes again. Around me 
darkness, within me joy! And so I go on till I reach 
my destination. 


282 THE FAILURE 


But it is useless. I shall certainly go blind some 
day—I am sure of that! Already space is punctured 
before me at several points. Little black spots dance 
and whirl in front of my eyes and no lens dispels 
them. When they grow larger and finally unite, a 
black curtain of blindness will fall—never to rise again 
—between me and the wonderful world of sunshine 
and color. All will be over! 

If I do not die blind I shall die a paralytic. My 
nerves too are spoiled and my brain is sick. For some 
time I have been noticing the warnings: aches and 
numbness in a leg; involuntary twitchings in my 
fingers; sharp stabbing pains in my head. Every now 
and then I feel a sensation of melting in my skull. 
When I try to think my mind gets muddled and 
clouded. Ideas vanish all of a sudden and I am un- 
able to recall them; while some stupid word, some in- 
significant image, pops up in their place and stays 
there, refusing to be pushed back into the night of 
unconsciousness where it belongs. ‘The air weighs 
heavy upon me as if I were supporting the world on 
my head, and inside all is emptiness and pain. I can- 
not work. I cannot think. I refuse to know any- 
thing. Tremendous apathy, fatigue, idleness—spir- 
itual loss of appetite, from having drunk everything 
and vomited everything! Hatred of all ideas and all 
faces! I am an object of contempt and compassion 
in my own eyes. 

More than once I have fainted at home or on the 
street; and then—long days of convalescence, of en- 






THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE BODY 283 


forced rest, of indescribable humiliation, of impotent 
rage, of spasmodic purposeless strain. And nothing 
‘helps, nothing is able to galvanize me—neither coffee, 
‘nor tea, nor wine, nor women, nor good conversation. 
I am full of disgust. I am drowned in Nothingness. 
My one desire is for night-time and bed, for deep, dull 
_bestial slumber that will last till high noon. 

Aberrations now and _ then—caprices, strange 
whims, fixed ideas; and frightful in the midst of it 
all, that terrifying confusion, that oppression, that 
heaviness of head which is not only headache but 
soul ache—anemia of the mind, dumb shame at a 
hated but necessary rest! There are moments when I 
seem unable to grasp a thought again. Distorted fan- 
‘cies, impossible figures, disjointed fragments and 
phrases race in a mad shrieking dance through my 
brain. I am caught up in the whirl, lost in the tumult 
of my own creations. Lights vault over each other, 
appear and disappear in a black sea. Then the hag- 
gard fainting weariness of one who does not belong to 
a world no longer his and who eats only because he 
would get close again to a bodily health that is solid 
and tangible! 

One of these days the crisis will not pass. One 
side of my body will fall motionless, forever. My 
brain will not act, will not think, will not see what 
it saw, nor remember what it has seen, will not under- 
stand the thoughts of others, nor correlate and express 
its own. A sluggish stirring of a few idiotic, meaning- 
less, unrelated images! White, all around: white- 


284 THE FAILURE 


washed walls, white aprons, a white sky above that 
holds no secrets, the hustling tranquillity of a respec- | 
table, a private, sanatorium! 

Or perhaps—wild shrieks, monstrous fears, terrify- 
ing nights of phantoms and lamentations in the dark- 
ness of a mind and the darkness of a padded room! 

Or perhaps—a slow unconscious fading away— 
never understanding again, never comprehending 
again, never knowing again, ever, ever—not even un- 
derstanding that there is no understanding! And— 
the.end:...4 

Wherein I have sinned shall I be punished! I have 
read so many useless things, I have thought so many 
stupid and disgusting thoughts! So—never shall I 
read again! Never shall I think again! Shadows 
without, emptiness within... 

Finis! 


Allegretto 


“We shall stand with heads high as long as the day lasts; and 
what we can do ourselves we shall not leave to be done by 


those who come after us.” 
GOETHE. 





Chapter 44: Death 


But who said I was going to die? 

Die? Shall I too some day suddenly stop breathing, 
seeing, moving, suffering? Must I do as others do— 
-as all do? 

All men die! 

Thank you! But is that any reason why I should 
die too? Dying is all right for those who like that 
form of amusement. I am Myself—not some one else! 

Come now, let’s talk sense! There must be some 
mistake here, a big mistake. What earthly reason can 
there be that I too should disappear, stupidly, like 
the first nobody who comes along! Don’t you know 
who I am? I carry the whole world inside me! 
Don’t you know? If I die there will be no rain to 
fall and spatter on the leaves; no beautiful warm sun 
to give you a tan; no green-white fields of alfalfa to 
become billowing seas of shadow as the wind caresses 
them; no vast blue sky; no calm white oxen; no Ma- 
donnas on shields of gold in the depths of dark 
churches; no frenzied songs from the lips of jilted 
maidens; no jewels to sparkle at night in show-win- 
dows in the red glare of electric lights! 

{The whole world with its beauties and its horrors, 
with its ideas and its material forms—the whole world 
is here, in me, within my very Self! And if I were 


to die it would be—cancelled. } 
287 


So you say I must die like anybody else—turn into 
a clammy corpse, into stinking carrion, a mess of 
squirmy worms, a handful of dust, a fistful of muck! 

How could I possibly think such a thing of my- 
self? This world will suddenly die with me? All I 
carry in my heart and brain—this ceaseless stirring 
of thoughts, memories, fancies, struggles—all over, 
over for ever? How can that be? Is that just? How 
can I imagine the world going on if I can think it only 
in my thoughts? 

Off with you, malicious and insidious deceivers, 
hyenas hungering for carcasses! I cannot die! I have 
no intention of dying! And I won’t die! | 

I suppose you think that I am hanging on to life 
because I am happy, beatified, contented—lolling in 
comforts, rolling in money? 

Far from it! I am the world’s most unhappy and 
miserable man. I have no loves, no riches, no friends. 
I am not handsome. I am not strong. The world has 
given me but few joys. I have rarely tasted pleasure. 
I have often wept. I have almost always suffered. 
And yet—I do not want to die. I refuse! I refuse! 
I intend to go on living. I insist on living forever. 

My dear parson: don’t come and bore me with talk 
about other worlds—a calmer, more beautiful, more 
luminous life. I don’t believe it. I know nothing 
about any such worlds. I will have none of the happi- 
ness you promise. This is the world I know, this earth, 
this hideous, gloomy, tumultuous life. This is the life 
I want. This is the life I must have. This is the life 


288 THE FAILURE 


DEATH 289 


‘Task for—forever. Yes, this miserable, wretched, un- 
_ happy, disgusting life with all its misery and wretched- 
ness and unhappiness and sorrow. A glimpse of sky 
through a half-opened window! ‘The song of a bird 
ona morning of springtime! The laugh of a baby and 

of a woman. A word I can write to some one who 
loves me. The quivering shadow of a tree on a wall, 
shining white under an August moon! 





Chapter 45: But for That Very Reason 


Ir would be difficult, I believe, to find a man who has 
made a greater failure of his life. I have nothing left 
to lose. All the strings and props which keep others 
on their feet have been cut in my case—those which 
are dropped from heaven (faiths and beliefs), as well 
as those which attach to the earth (dogmas and prin- 
ciples). I am a bottom to the Pit of Evil. I have 
denied my God. I had to deny Him; I deserted my 
faith and the faithful abandoned me. 

Knowledge does not suffice me. Men disgust me— 
women even worse! Literature turns my stomach; 
inspiration fails; fame nauseates. My life is dirty 
and irksome; my body is rotting. My one first su- 
preme and innermost desire—Power—is now not even 
a desire. All my tables of value were broken in the 
course of my inner convulsions. All hope has paled in 
the darkness of these years. The anchors that might 
have saved me have proved to be hooks, fastening me 
to earth, to a life that has no promise, no allurement. 
The performance is over; the scenery has been turned 
to the wall; the lights are out. The singers have shed 
their royal gowns and driven off in taxis in their plain 
black dresses. There lie the violins, abandoned, voice- 
less, beside scores that will never be opened again. 
The last féte has ended with the last note, which still 

290 


BUT FOR THAT VERY REASON 291 


vibrates across a dark stage sounding the key of this 


all too empty silence. 


But two roads are now left open: total imbecility 
or suicide. 

And yet I still feel an immense will to live. I refuse 
to die. I want to start over again, do my life over 


again—find other reasons for living—living, if need 


be, suspended in the void, with no strings above my 


head, no props behind my back, no crutches under my 
arms; but living, living! Living in the full sense of 


the word; living with eye and hand, with brain and 
- liver—living ten, twenty, thirty years, until I have 


learned to make my voice heard in the discordant 
choruses of men. 

I refuse to die either halfway or altogether—either 
in mind or in body. I have in me something stronger 
than all defeat—a rock set up in the full tide of my 
soul, unshaken of the breakers that have crashed over 
it. In me is a beast with an appetite, with two legs 
that must walk, with a head that must think, with a 
hand that must write. But why? In the name of what 
faith? With what goal in view? The beast knoweth 
not. The beast has no intelligence; the beast has no 
religion—the beast is just a beast: it will not down! 
Though the banners have been lowered the ramparts 
still stand. If words fail to fit the facts, to hell with 
words and long live the facts! Fact resists and exists. 
Fact is irrefutable and tyrannical. Fact will not 
down! 

It is not only my blood that refuses to think of ceas- 


292 THE FAILURE 


ing. My very Self refuses to abdicate—my Self, which — 
closed one by one the windows opening on “the Pos- — 
sible,’ and was driven even from the one window 
which still held it, the window on “the Impossible.” 
And there it stands in the darkness with no appetites 
and no powers. But it refuses to down! It waits. 
It hopes for nothing, but—it waits. If the worst comes 
it will accept it, but it will not lie down there where 
Nothing begins—Nothing without even the hope of 
sorrow! 

My deeper Self has been crushed and tortured in its 
every fiber; yet it rejoices in its torment, for that tor- 
ment means life, that torment means struggle. That 
Destiny persecutes it in such fashion is proof to the 
Ego of its worth as a victim, gives it a sense of its 
importance in the universe. Down and down it has 
gone to the depths of the abyss. It can go no further. 
Either it must there dig its grave or go back upward 
again toward the light. “There is no other choice. 

So the man who has failed rises again and begins 
a new chapter. 

But this new chapter is in no way like the others. 
The things I denied stand denied. Abandoned dreams 
will not be dreamed again. I repell to-day the ambi- 
tions I despised yesterday. The men I loathed I still 
hold at arm’s length. The goals which at one time 
dazzled my eyes are still far away. 

But what does that matter? A new road lies before 
me—the secret is revealed. A last possibility of great- 
ness is looming in my path and I do not reject it. 





BUT FOR THAT VERY REASON 293 


. Because of it, because of it alone, flowers are again 
blooming in the desert of my mind, and the pupils of 


my eyes, shrinking in shame behind their red lids, 
sparkle and flash once more. I can still be a hero! 
Against self-destruction I set up self-esteem. It is 
this—this nothing, that saves me. 

For me there is nothing left. I am an out-and-out 
nihilist. I no longer believe in anything. I am an out- 
and-out skeptic. I no longer believe in anything. I 
am the perfect, the accomplished, the definitive 


atheist. An atheist who does not kneel even to the 


secular, the rational, the philosophical, the humani- 
tarian beliefs that have replaced the ancient mytholo- 
gies. I know that our efforts all come to nothing. I 
know the end of us all is nothing. I know that at the 
end of Time, the reward of our toil will be nothing— 
and again nothing. I know that all our handiwork 
will be destroyed. I know that not even ash will be 
left from the fires that consume us. I know that our 
ideals, even those we achieve, will vanish in the eternal 
darkness of oblivion and final non-being. There is no 
hope, none, in my heart. Wo promise, none, can I 
make to myself and to others. No recompense can I 


expect for my labors. No fruit will be born of my 


thoughts. The Future—eternal seducer of all men, 
eternal cause of all effects—offers me nothing but the 
blank prospect of annihilation. 

Yet, face to face with this terrible outlook, face to 
face with this dread despair, caught as I am in a 
race-toward Nothing, I do not wince, I do not draw 


294 THE FAILURE 


back. I am still willing to live on. All my doing will 
be useless, but for that very reason I am compelled to 
do. Nothing—the Nothingness of myself, of my work, 
of the world entire—is the final goal of all my efforts. 
And yet for that very reason I will go on striving till 
the earth enfolds me in its black embrace. 

I repudiate all my utilitarian past. Men want some- 
thing for all they do. Even such actions as seem 
prompted of the spirit—acts of love, faith, creation— 
expect an equivalent return, ask, sooner or later, for 
payment. Nothing for nothing! Even religions, the 
arts, the philosophies, all are based on gain. Every 
human act without exception is a note of exchange 
which demands cash. The date of maturity varies. 
Some notes fall due in another life, in heaven, or in 
ages to come—but the day of reckoning will fall at 
last. If men were convinced that any part of their 
labor would be unrecompensed forever they would stop 
work right where they are. Even God insists upon His 
reward in prayers and sacrifices. He has reserved a 
special section in Hell’s prison for His bad risks. 

In times past, I have been the most greedy of all 
graspers. I wanted everything in return for a little. 
For a few years of solitude, of study, of climbing, Ll 
asked eternal omnipotence. I wanted the Spirit not 
for the Spirit’s sake, but as a lever to pry things, an 
instrument to all worldly possessions. 

Now that that has all crumbled before my eyes, now 
that I know nothing save that the Infinite is unsolv- 
able and that all labor is futile, now I strangle the 


BUT FOR THAT VERY REASON 295 


‘seeker, the utilitarian, the robber, the extortioner, the 
cut-throat, that is within me. I consent to live for 
the very reason that there is no wage for living, and 
I continue to think precisely because thought can never 
draw its salary. 

The desperate man finds on the rock-bottom of his 
despair a foothold for a rebound that will take him 
far above the hell-pits where the mere whimperers 
whimper. In the tragic vacuity of his soul, the atheist 
—who believes in no gods, in no man, in no thing— 
finds the strength to believe in Himself, in the present 
moment of his being, in the world of which he is a 
part. After the orgy of anguish is over the possi- 
bility of joy springs triumphant from the very bosom 
of torment. Since I hope for nothing I cannot be dis- 
appointed; I shall not be downcast at the spineless 
failures of fact. 

The man who is alone, who stands on his own feet, 
who is stripped bare, who asks for nothing and wants 
nothing, who has reached the apex of disinterested- 
ness not through blind renunciation but through ex- 
cess of clear vision, turns to the world which stretches 
out before him as a burned prairie, as a devastated city 
—a world in which no churches, asylums, refuges, 
ideals, are left—and says: “Though you promise me 
nothing I am still with you, I am still an atom of 
your energies, my work is part of your work; I am 
your companion and your mirror as you march on 
your merciless way.” 

So long as a man expects something from this uni- 


296 THE FAILURE 


verse, he is only a trader out for what he can get, 
exchanging, bargaining. He is angry if he fails; he 
kills himself if he cannot meet his obligations, if his 
notes are not paid, if receipts do not cover disburse- 
ments. But the man who has renounced every recom- 
pense in advance and does work which will be undone, 
knowing that it will be undone, is the only man worthy, 
really worthy, of living happily in this universe. In 
a world of shopkeepers, he alone is a noble, though the 
signboards the traders have hung on their shops boast 
of the excellence, purity, and genuineness of their 
wares. 

He does his work without expecting any one to 
do it for him; he gives knowing that he never will 
receive; he strives for the heights knowing he will 
never attain them; he gives his whole Self knowing 
he will never be justly rewarded. But in this precisely 
lies his tragic grandeur—in this lies his detachment 
from humanity which still binds him to men. Other 
joys are denied him. Unlike those who believe in 
life, in humanity, in truth, he has no promised con- 
solations, no self-deceptions, no illusions to help him 
along on his way and make his road easier. He has 
no strength but his own to rely on; and his knowledge 
that he is strong enough to do without all the rest, 
fills his soul with a wholesome, though bitter, joy. 
What courage, what virtue, is there in living when we 
are sure our hopes will become realities; that some 
sort of paradise, earthly or celestial, is waiting to com- 
fort us for all our troubles? Man’s real nobility and 


BUT FOR THAT VERY REASON 297 


his greatest heroism lie in his being able to go on liv- 
ing, when he knows there is no reason for his living; 
when all the poultices and crutches that make life en- 
durable have been cast aside. 

To achieve this nobility, this greatness, this last and 
desperate heroism, I shrink both from death and from 
mediocrity. I go on living, I insist on living, and lI 
shall live without fear of disillusionment and of defeat. 

I have been a total failure. But from that failure 
springs my strength for a new victory. 


Chapter 46: The Return to Earth 


So then, I am alive again. But alone, terribly alone. 
Just myself—not a god, not God; but, like Him, un- 
interested in the whole business, since I could not be 
master of things like Him! 

I must reconstruct my life along new lines—a life 
all my own, a real life, a new life. Just myselfi—no 
allies, no companions! No helping hand to steady 
me should I stumble on the upward path. The world 
is full of voices: but it is a case of “glad tidings of 
great joy”; and of such I have had a bellyful. Your 
“elad tidings” are for other ears, for people who have 
not been freed. ‘To me they are empty words. 

Yet in making myself over, in straightening my 
course, in starting on a new journey I need something 
to lean on; I must take root again somewhere. I have 
only myself; but that Self is more tightly bound to 
one part of the universe than to other parts. I am not 
just a metaphysical absolute floating in an atmosphere 
of concept. I was born in a certain spot; I belong to 
a certain race, I have behind me a certain tradition and 
a certain history. To concentrate, to collect myself, 
means simply closer contact with my native soil, with 
my people, with the culture from which, willy-nilly, I 
have come. 


I must start from the beginning again. I must be 
298 


THE RETURN TO EARTH 299 


born again, reénter the womb again,—not a womb of 
flesh, my mother’s, but a truer and greater one: my 
native land. As long as I was but a thinking maniac, 
the world was my country and my nation was the 
bookshop where I found the only laws I was bound to 
respect. But now that I intend to recast my bones, 
to start a new blood flowing in my veins, I must re- 
turn to the deepest roots of my concrete being. 

So I determined to become acquainted with my 
birthplace all over again, and my rediscovery of my 
old home was the rediscovery of my own soul. Doc- 
tors often prescribe for their patients the atmosphere 
of their native regions. Happily, I, the convalescent 
in this case, was much improved by a breath of my 
native air. So long as I was buried in theory and in 
universals I remained a man of the city, of houses. I 
forgot the country, or if I ever went back to it, I did 
not see it; I did not open my arms to it; I did not 
love it. But our Mother’s face can be seen only from 
the high lands, far from the painting and powdering 
of the towns. Up here on the mountain tops I have 
found her again—reddened in the sunlight, pale under 
the moon, white with the snow, freshened with flowers, 
wrinkled by the wind, never old, ever young, ever the 
same, with a smile that is not a smile of dissimulation. 

In vain may I try to twist my suffering self into an 
Athenian god, or a Scandinavian athlete. As a brain, 
as a brain merely, I can talk with a Chinaman and 
with a Sufi, with a German professor and an English 
essayist, with a French Jacobin and a Greek sophist. 


300 THE FAILURE 


I belong to all ages and all races. I understand. I 
am understood. My words are in international coin- 
age. I can spend them in any market. But the mo- 
ment I crawl into my shell, mind and body, brain and 
heart, the moment I would really get inside a race, or 
inside an era of history, it is to this age that I belong, 
it is to this spot that I am rooted. No matter what 
I do I am a Tuscan, born among Tuscans, on Tuscan 
soil, among Tuscan values—born in Tuscany in 1881, 
twenty years old in the first year of this century, and 
writing now this year of our Lord one thousand nine 
hundred and twelve. I am not only an Italian, but 
a Tuscan. A man’s true country is not the kingdom, 
or republic, where he is born. Italy is too big for the 
individual Italian. Our genuine countries must be 
small. Even in France, a nation closely knit if any 
ever was, the man from Brittany feels himself a 
stranger to the man from Provence; and the Norman 
or the Alsatian is Norman or Alsatian even in the 
heart of Paris. 

I feel that I am very deeply a Tuscan. To me 
Neapolitans and Venetians are foreigners; I feel they 
are further removed from me than some barbarians. 
I am not happy in their company. We are not broth- 
ers. The fact that men write the same language and 
are governed by the same laws does not make them 
countrymen. 

Even among Tuscans I often feel aloof, a stranger. 
When I say Tuscany I mean particularly a rural Tus- 
cany, the mountains, the hills, the rivers, the horizons 


THE RETURN TO EARTH 301 


that stretch from the rosy turrets of the Apuans to the 
vast lonely marshes of the Maremma, from the tower- 
ing peaks of the Apennines to the heaving green of the 
Tuscan sea. I mean these skies that are beautiful 
even when they are ugly, the silvery pallor of our 
gnarled olive trees, our cypresses straight and erect as 
lances, the heavy grapevines festooned across our hill- 
sides, our desolate rocky valleys where only the purple 
thistle and the sulphur broom can force their way up 
between the stones. 

And when I say Tuscany, I mean the great Tuscans 
and their genius: I mean the Etruscan fathers keeping 
their slumbering vigils in their tombs, as calm and as 
shrewd as seers—the Etruscans who came from the 
Orient bringing the love of the future and the certain 
promise of art; the Etruscans who taught civilization 
to the Romans, and drew their boundaries about that 
part of Italy which was to foster her greatest sons; 
and so on down to the impetuous Dante, the dry and 
tart Macchiavelli, the overpowering Michelangelo, the 
insatiate Leonardo, the deep-seeing Galileo. In all 
these men one feels muscle, fiber, strength, a current 
of vulgar forceful realism, sobriety, clarity, greatness 
without inflation and rhetoric, without bigotry and 
superstition. ‘Tuscany has bred a genius all its own, 
which stands apart from every other type of genius, 
whether Italian or foreign. With this genius I feel 
myself in complete accord. 

Finding myself meant, therefore, finding Tuscany, 
its soil and its tradition—a Tuscany that no longer 


302 THE FAILURE 


meant the roads about Florence running along between | 
gray walls and the villa gates of the wealthy, but trails 
of goat-herds up over the backs of the Apennines— 
alone with the skies above my head, alone with the 
woods at my feet. No longer the urban heights of the 
Vial det Colli and the Incontro; but the humpbacked 
summits of Pratomagno and the peaks of the Luna 
Alps. All for myself I chose a hillock, hidden, remote, 
unknown, that lies in the heart and at the same time 
on the outskirts of my Tuscany. Near by are the 
source of the Tiber, the wood where Saint Francis suf- 
fered, the castle where Michelangelo was born, the 
village where Pier della Francesca first saw the light. 
To a house not far from mine Carducci came as a boy 
and a republican. From the hilltops above I can see 
the Romagna seashore and the highlands of Umbria. 

On this rocky hillside where the wind is never still, 
my soul again found peace and itself. Within this 
circle of glowering and jagged mountains, in this clear- 
ing, barren of flowers and grass but fertile with stones; 
in the shadow of these hard and untrimmed oak trees; 
within hearing of this narrow but clear-flowing stream 
(dirty and overgrown when it reaches Rome! ); under 
this intensely blue sky (so delicate, so transparent, 
even when scattered with clouds), I again inhaled the 
fresh smell of the earth, drank in pure air, tasted real 
bread, felt the honest warmth of burning cord-wood. 
Step by step Life won me back with the beauty of its 
simplicity. I became a child again and a primitive, 
a savage, and a bumpkin. I united the bond that tied 


THE RETURN TO EARTH 303 


' me to my ancestors—plain peasants of the peasantry 
and good plebeian country folk, who herded cows and 
harvested corn in all this neighborhood. I made my 
peace with the old family. For this prodigal son, who 
had rioted at all the intellectual banquets of Europe 
and laid a whip to other people’s swine, the old house 
found a welcome corner by its smoke-blackened fire- 
place, and a seat at the pine-board table creaking un- 
der yellow polenta, and salted hams and loaves of hot 
bread fresh from the oven. 

During the first days, the joy of my discovery was 
so great that I had to take to my room actual pieces 
of this fraternal, paternal country, which I recognized 
and loved each day; sometimes a stone, pointed like 
a mountain, sometimes a gall apple loosened from the 
leaf of an oak, then, a smooth, well-modeled acorn or 
a bunch of wild flowers, or a cypress berry, or an ear 
of corn. All such simple, humble, unimportant, use- 
less, common things gave me untold comfort: they were 
my friends, my family, parts of me, symbols of the 
earth from which I sprang, and of its tradition. 

At the same time I turned to the writings of coun- 
trymen of mine who had gone before me. Since my 
first hungry years of omnivorous reading, I had rarely 
gone back to them. I had steeped myself in exotic 
things, scarcely reading an Italian book, and among 
Italians always preferring the thinkers to the poets, 
learning to imagination. When, up there, returning 
to my country of the present, I felt an unconquerable 
longing to go back to my country of the past. In the 


304 THE FAILURE 


shades of the beeches and the live-oaks, breathing in 
the cool fragrance of spearmint, fanned by breezes 
from the Vernia, I re-read, one by one, books which 
were mine by right of birth and rebirth: Dante, Com- 
pagni, Boccaccio, Sacchetti, Macchiavelli, Redi, Gino 
Capponi, Giosué Carducci. Books which I had read 
out of curiosity or a sense of duty, which had bored 
me at school and had failed to move me out of school, 
which I had looked upon as lessons in rhetoric or as 
historical monuments, now opened their pages to me 
as friends and brothers, took on a new color, a richer 
flavor, coming to life again in all their primitive vigor. 
This “old stuff” made my spirit young again. These 
substantial, unspoiled men of bygone days seemed to 
me, in certain respects, more modern than I was. I 
felt I belonged to their household, that I was one of 
their family, that I spoke their language, that my 
experiences enabled me to understand even things 
which to strangers must seem vulgar and queer. 

It was like the return of an exile to the places where 
he was reared. I saw everything as if for the first 
time. My mind was flooded with things that seemed 
new to me, yet each in the place where it ought to be, 
each in its appropriate frame. The potholes of Hell; 
the beaming rivers of Paradise; Florence bristling with 
towers and lances; incorrigible youths—rapers of vir- 
gins, terrors of husbands; doddling old men now clowns 
now rascals; princes sly and cruel; the natural un- 
sophisticated wickedness of man; movements of stars 
in the Infinite, and of wine in the wine vats; a history 


THE RETURN TO EARTH 305 


‘of failures and of hopes; the Valdarno and the Ma- 
remma; the Casentino and the Mugello—all the fair 
land of Tuscany, with its men and its gardens, its 
skies and its fountains, from the tumults of the Com- 
mune to the backbitings of ’59! My country crept 
back into my heart, snuggled warm against my warm 
flesh, opening its arms to me as a mother to a long- 
expected son who finally returns. 

Not only was I captivated by the meaty substance 
of those books, but quite as much by the magnificent 
art with which they were made, by the marvelous lan- 
guage in which they were written. No ornament, no 
exaggeration, no lace work, no weakness, no bad taste 
—strong stuff simply done, all design, all relief, bronze 
and stone, not whipped cream or honey. Deep decisive 
lines, rough at times perhaps, but strong and clear, 
and never one too many. A language rich and ever 
new, full of short-cuts and expressive detours, but no 
padding, no softening, familiar, racy, popular, yet with 
no damage to solemnity and majesty. In these books, 
as in the mountains of my country, an apparent pov- 
erty, a wholesome simplicity, a stern joy—grandeur 
and freedom! 

Tuscany, retouched in this way, is my Tuscany, but 
it is also the real and the glorious Tuscany—not the 
Tuscany of bastard Florentines, of aristocratic cab- 
bage patches, of those tiny, suave, sweet, castrated, 
would-be writers, who, from the Seventeenth Century 
on, have been stinking up their province and making 
it contemptible. 


306 THE FAILURE 


To this rediscovered and greater Tuscany I, for my 
part, shall remain true; for to make myself over again 
I had to start from the ground up—from the place 
and from the moment of my birth. I am like the soil 
from which I sprang, and would resemble it more 
closely still. I can no longer do without the inheri- 
tance of my fathers, and remain deaf to the voices of 
brothers I live too late to have known. 

First the whole world was in me. Later I found 
myself alone and almost without life. To get my 
strength back again, I had to get a new hold on that 
bit of earth to which I was most closely placed and 
related. Now I have suckled again at my first 
Mother’s breast. Once again I have listened to her 
voice. A new blood is spurting through my veins. My 
tongue is loosened. I am ready to resume my journey 
along the road to my true destiny. 


Chapter 47: Who Am I? 


But what is that destiny? What am I? 

Now that I have only my recovered strength and 
my desperate exaltation, I cannot seek inspiration in 
extraneous motives, I cannot trust to phantoms out- 
side my self. All the gods—sacred and profane, 
Asiatic and European—have hidden their faces from 
me. I have no God before me. I have based my 
cause on Nothing, as the ferocious Unicum. ‘The uni- 
verse falls into two parts: I—and the rest. 

Now this inner kernel of my being must give life to 
everything, must animate and transmute all that sur- 
rounds me, to help me to endure it. In this last and 
decisive battle I must stand without allies. If death 
overtakes me and does not halt in my presence, I am 
but a good-for-nothing, fit only to flounder and finally 
to rot in the boundless vat of uselessness. 

You, and I, therefore, O hateful Universe! The 
fight is between you and me! Here I am on my feet 
again, with some difficulty, sore from many falls, but 
still erect from the waist up; ready to challenge you, 
ready to spit into this puddle of slime where spineless 
Abels thrust the Cains who do not obey the unwritten 
laws of the species. Hard indeed is the life of an 
egoist without the protection of friendly walls, the 
shelter of calm bays, the clasp of warm and cordial 

307 


308 THE FAILURE 


hands. However, I want a cane not to lean on, but 
to strike with. 

Who, then, am I? 

What is this capital I have at my disposal, all mine, 
inherited from no one, stolen from no one, but earned 
penny by penny with the sweat of my soul in the fac- 
tory of experience, and now my only treasure, the little 
power I have—my real self, in a word? 

Many people, friends and enemies alike, have tried 
to define me, to describe me, to fix my limits and out- 
lines. I have listened. I have said nothing. I have 
smiled. Having covered half my visibly possible life, 
after quite a few trials and a long quarantine of soli- 
tude, I think that I know myself better than others do. 

I am not a man of action, and I am not a philoso- 
pher. I like history but I will never be a cabinet 
minister. Theories attract me, but I will never write 
a system. I am neither a money changer nor a saint. 
I want money for the freedom it brings, but I have 
not the courage to drop other things to get it. I envy 
the great ascetics, but I do not believe in gods or in 
heavens. In this jumble of health and disease, of 
philistinism and wickedness, which is of interest to me 
alone, there are but two aspects which can interest 
others. 

I am, to say the whole thing in two words, a poet 
and an iconoclast, a dreamer and a skeptic, a lyrist 
and a cynic. How these two souls of mine can live 
and get along together it would take too long to tell. 
Yet such is the sum and substance of my individuality. 


WHO AM I? 309 


There are moments when I am just a pitiable senti- 
mentalist, moved to tears as the mere tune of a Vien- 
nese waltz, tortured on a piano, filters through my 
drawn shutters on a quiet night; or again, a child 
overflowing with tenderness as I gaze at an overcast 
sky, stupidly gray, without even the cheer of a black 
or white cloud; or again, an unfortunate wretch able 
to tremble with love for an old man I do not know, 
for a dead friend, for a broken flower, for a house with 
doors and windows barred. 

On the other hand there are times when I become the 
wolf of Hobbes, with fangs that must needs tear and 
bite. Nothing is sacred to me, not the greatness of 
the great dead, nor glories tested by centuries, nor 
truths proved by ages of experience, nor the sanctity 
of laws, nor the majesty of codes, nor the axioms of 
ethics, nor the ties of deepest affection. I am ready 
to turn everything upside down, to destroy religions, 
to expose the ugly side of every imposing front, the 
blemishes on every star, the meanness and smallness 
of every grandeur, the cowardliness underlying every 
revered institution, the blindness of every sage, the in- 
famy of every moralist, the right of every wrong, the 
beauty of every evil, the infinitude of Nothing itself. 
I revel in rending, stinging, offending, in lifting veils, 
stripping corpses, tearing off masks. I am without 
fear, without shame. I respect no man. I am happy 
in a fight. I glory in confusing, in frightening, in seem- 
ing and in being cruel. 

But this orgy of destruction over, the fanciful 


310 THE FAILURE 


dreamer comes to the fore in me, making up impos- 
sible stories, distorting realities, projecting his most 
evil instincts, his maddest longings upon the conveni- 
ent mirror of his imagination, drawing caricatures of 
the men he hates and of the men he loves, taking a 
hint from life itself, then elongating and magnifying 
it in his dream to gigantic proportions, 

At such times I am beset by absurd stories, crazy 
plans, unbelievable adventures, by madmen and crimi- 
nals, who have never lived and are trying to come to 
life in me; by fictitious and unreasonable loves, by 
strange and horrible deaths. In the long periods when, 
like every one else, I am a bourgeois and a realist, I am 
forced to create a new world, in which I am the first 
to be unsettled and disturbed, a world which contains 
fragments and flashes of profound truth, but which is 
not the real living world we all think we know. Within 
the confines of this world I move with absolute free- 
dom. I give the creatures of my fancy the faces I want 
them to have. I make them speak the language I like 
to hear. I have them live for purposes no living man 
would choose and then die suddenly by their own 
hands for reasons that would seem ridiculous to men 
of flesh and blood. 

In any case, however, I remain the man who refuses 
to accept the world. This attitude is the common 
principle of unity and consistency in my two incoher- 
ent souls. Since I refuse to accept the world as it is, 
now I try to refashion it with my imagination, now I 
try to reform it by first breaking it to pieces. I re- 


WHO AM I? 311 


build with my art, I demolish with thought and logic 
—two opposite processes which nevertheless converge 
and harmonize. 

Taken as I am, and as I shall always be—it is too 
late to change!—TI feel that I too am a force both of 
creation and of dissolution, that I am a real value, and 
_have a right, a place, a mission, among men. Only 
imbeciles condemned to imbecility for life can avow 
satisfaction with this world. If a man tries to stir, to 
animate, to inflame, to renew, to broaden it, he has 
the right—not to gratitude, for which I do not give a 
hang—but to freedom of speech and freedom of life. 
To live at all every man must believe he is not alto- 
gether useless. I do not ask, do not desire, any 
other support; but I too must have this pitiable assur- 
ance, quite as much as the weaklings. I live and act 
knowing that my life and all I do will end in Noth- 
ing. But I demand that others admit my right to be 
among them, and to offend them, for in so doing I am 
doing something for their good. 

In a world where people think only of eating and 
making money, of amusing themselves and bossing 
others, some one must, from time to time, throw a 
new light on things, disclosing the extraordinary that 
is in the ordinary, the mystery that is in the obvious, 
the beauty that is in the dust pan. In a large and 
powerful caste made up of slaves of opinion and tradi- 
tion, of parasitic and sophistic pedants, of preachers 
of old fairy stories, of jailers to moral and mystic jails, 
of loquacious parrots prating of musty moral and social 


312 THE FAILURE 


norms and mildewed commonplaces, there should be, I 
say, an alarm clock, a night clerk, a sentry to stand 
guard over pure intellect, a brawny wielder of the 
pick-ax, an incendiary with a zest for arson, some one 
eager to burn up and to tear down—to clear the way 
for the light of the open spaces, for the trees of re- 
conquered liberty, for future experiments and achieve- 
ments. 

I am one of those men who -~undertake the most 
thankless tasks, who go where there is most danger. In 
return for the good and the evil I deliberately do, I 
claim the right to breathe, to warm myself at the fire, 
to walk, to lift my head, to spit in people’s faces, to 
live according to my own law. 


Chapter 48: My Style 


I po not write for money. I do not write to improve 
my complexion. I do not write to make my way with 
shy girls and fat men. Nor even do I write to twine 
the gay wreath of a reputation around my ragged 
slouch hat. ee 

_ I write just to get the stuff off my mind—as a cess- 
pool drains off its superfluous sewage. Yes, just that, 
you delicate, you proper people—proper as a baritone 
out for a walk! 

- Yes, to get the muck out of my mind! Notice: I 
do not say “to liberate my spirit” as does your long- 
haired hero and eponym, your philistine of philistines, 
Wolfgang von Goethe, intimate adviser of the Duke of 
Weimar, and of many rehabilitated stealers of fire. 

He got his “liberation” through the tragic frivolities 
of a Werther—the tenuous despair of a voluntary 
exile; and the product of all this liberating made its 
way to the make-up tables of sentimental prostitutes, 
and to the bedsides of future suicides,—a deadly play- 
thing, but wrapped in lace with all the frills and trim- 
mings of well-bred literature. 

I, on the other hand, get rid of the stuff inside me; 
and I think of the process in the most vulgar and 
nauseating terms. I mean the sputum that gathers 
in my catarrhed throat, and which spatters in every 

313 


314 THE FAILURE 


sneeze I write on faces I would also like to punch. 
I mean the bilious vomit that the spectacle of life 
about me draws up into my stomach. I mean the pus 
that oozes from the wounds and ulcers of my immoral 
Self, exposed to contagion in this world, the most 
crowded of pest houses. I mean the thunderous belch 
that rises, like my contempt, from deep down in me! 
No, my friends, I warn you, nothing ladylike will 
ever come from my hurrying pen. 

Rather than pale ink I would have on my pen-point 
blood that is dark and streaming, like the gore that 
flows from the breast of a hero stabbed in a midnight 
brawl. I would have the metal tear and burn the 
paper like a red-hot iron, that an acrid but head-clean- 
ing smoke might rise from the scorched furrow to the 
open nostrils of him who reads. 

O respectable public mine, I never write with the 
fussy humility of a butler handing you your hat and 
coat. There are authors who stand toward their reader 
like a counterfeit Neapolitan whining open-mouthed, 
thrumming a guitar, under the windows of a winter 
boarding-house—in hopes of a tip! Others, like long- 
haired Magdalens, prostrate themselves at the reader’s 
feet, with vases of balms and ointments for all the 
corns and raw spots on his soul. Others remind me of 
the acolytes in starched collars who wave their censers 
back and forth on Sundays between the screams of 
the mass! 

No, I belong to a different species. I was not born 
to the calm regular breathing of the ox and the ass. 


MY STYLE 315 


_No meek shepherds whispered baby talk to me on the 


_ first day of my life. I was born a revolutionary; and 


I am not so sure that my first greeting to this world, 
rather than the regulation cry of surprise, was not a 
bar of music from some improper Marseillaise. No 
matter what the government of the world may be I 


shall always be against it! The natural attitude of my 
_ mind is one of protest. The instinctive posture of my 


body is one of attack. My favorite form of speech is 
invective and insult. Every love song turns on my 


lips into a refrain of revolt. My warmest effusions 
_ suddenly end in a titter of laughter, a sneer, an angry 


shrug of the shoulders. Oh, that my every word were 
a bullet whistling through the free air; my every 


_ phrase a burst of flame; my every chapter a stubborn 


barricade; my every book a massive stone to crush and 
flatten the hairy skulls of a people! 

There are words as white and fragile and perfumed 
as jasmine. There are words as sweet and sticky as 
lolly-pops. There are words as mushy, as warm, as 
sensuous as the legs of middle-aged adultresses. There 
are words so celestial, ethereal, exotic, that only the 
quills of fasting monks of old could scatter them over 
a sheet of paper like iridescent, tremulous, powdery 
wings of butterflies. There are words so “public,” so 
commonplace, so lacking in savor, that a prose made 
up of them falls apart at a touch as stale bread falls 
into crumbs. 

But none of these are the words I choose and prefer. 
My words must be hard as unbreakable rock: rough, 


316 THE FAILURE 


sharp, jagged, cruel as the stones that come down in 
the landslides, as the breakage from blasts in the quar- 
ries. They must be instinctively pagan, shamelessly 
naked, just as they came from the wine-stained lips 
of the creative masses. From these rough and homely 
words I would make a square, solid, substantial, 
wholesome, and forceful prose, fit to shame the 
squirters of perfume, the freedmen of the literary lit- 
eratures. In them I spit out my mucous, get rid of 
the pus, the gall, the rot in me, vomit up everything 
upon everybody. And then I too become sweet as the 
lilies of the valley; delightfully listening in the early 
morning to the chirping sparrows hopping about on 
the loose tiles; deliciously weeping as the bells ring in 
the squatty, crumbling belfries of neglected churches; 
carefully treading the garden paths outside the city 
gates, lest my foot fall unwarily on some hard-working 
ant. And some day you will hear a song rising from 
my clear heart, so whispering with sighs of bliss, so 
pregnant with tenderness, so fraught with tears of 
love, that to hear it will bring back to each of you the 
warmest, sunniest hour of your youth’s passion, but 
without any wrench of anguish and without the sorrow 
of a too languid joy. 


Chapter 49: Neither Down Nor Out 


So they are saying in Italy that I am a man who has 
_ run dry, who has sold out his stock, who has reached 
his limit—a failure! So they say I am a false alarm, 
a fire of straw—the spring breezes blowing away even 
the last traces of my ashes? 

Not so fast, boys! Just a moment, please! Far 
from being through I haven’t even begun! 

You must realize that all I have done—a good deal, 
you must admit—was just a preface, a prelude, an 
advance dummy, a flyer, an announcement—if you 
prefer, froth on the vat of the mash, that boils over to 
leave the wine clearer underneath. Don’t be discour- 
aged. ‘The best is yet to come! I have just been 
born! 

The straw fire was a bonfire! I have given you a 
Roman candle, a pin-wheel, a fire-cracker, something 
for you to play with and have a laugh with. But to- 
day I feel I can start a conflagration that cannot be 
put out till the whole world is on fire! 

So you have dug my grave! Well, what are you go- 
ing to put in it—unless perhaps the corpora delicti of 
your own abortions? Anyhow take my advice; chuck 
the epigraphs you have written for me! The tomb- 
stone does not exist that can keep me down. The 
sentences of death you pronounce upon me give me a 

317 a 


318 THE FAILURE 


mirth, a hilarity, an energy, a gumption, an impulse 
to be up and doing, such as I have not known for a 
long, long time. 

Listen, gentlemen: I must say it again! Don’t mis- 
take silence for a kick at the bucket. Don’t mistake 
meditation for resignation. Don’t mistake study for 
suicide. I am thirty, but my hair it still thick, light 
and curly. I still have one or two teeth left. I still 
have a grip in my hands. I am still shifty on my 
feet. I can still feel the blood hammering in my wrists 
and temples. ‘There is still a whirl of ideas in my 
brain. I can still think, in fact I think better than 
ever before. I still have something to say, with time 
ahead of me to say it. At home I have pen, ink, and 
plenty of paper, smooth white sheets that never stump 
my pen. I lack nothing. My hour has not come. You 
thought it struck long ago. You were mistaken. Keep 
an eye on the clock! I am not surrendering. Neither 
do I retreat. Here I am, gentlemen, still on the job; 
I, in person, ready to answer all comers on all subjects. 

I have so many things to say! You have no idea of 
all the impressions I have had, all the discoveries I 
have made, things which I must impart to the world 
before I die. I cannot condemn, I cannot suppress, 
this new part of myself which is the best, the only part 
which justifies all the other parts of me. 

I owe something to myself, to mankind, to the Spirit. 
I feel that I represent in my country and before the 
world a trend of ideas that is not well thought of, nor 
widely known and understood. I feel that I personify 


NEITHER DOWN NOR OUT 319 


attack on certain forms of thought and writing which 
are disgraceful, pernicious, imbecile. Should I keep 
quiet, then, hold my tongue, withdraw to the cell of the 
silent observer of men, or into the cozy corner of the 
man who plays safe, letting the world go hang so long 
as he doesn’t miss a meal? 

Rather death than such an end! I must get what I 
have to say out of my system. I must prevent people 
from saying certain things, thinking certain things, and 
writing in certain ways. A hopeless task? Never 
mind! In all sincerity, I don’t care in the least! I 
am indifferent to success. Sacrifice! Great and noble 
because it is absurd! Sacrifice because it is absurd! 
Nothing rational, nothing reasonable was ever called 
_ sacrifice. I feel that I am strong enough to waste my 
strength, like a Tantalus, desiring many things I shall 
never have. I feel rich enough to throw the best of 
my possessions out of the window. Not only have I 
not run dry; I can never be pumped dry. The flame 
in my soul is the flame which envelops the proud in 
the Hell of the Catholics: a flame that will never burn 
out. It seems to me as though my youth would be 
eternal—like the youth of the Greek gods. 

It seems so, I say—but I don’t really believe it. 
The day will come for me too when the golden scales 
will drop from things as the painted linen peels from 
powdery mummies. A day will come when the sun 
will be naught for me but one more fire in a suffocating 
sky; when the return of spring will mean nothing but 
the turning of a new page in the almanac; when the 


320 THE FAILURE 


flowers will vainly draw their exquisite colors from the 
dirty earth to seem more like the sky; when the eve- 
ning song of the nightingale will be but one of the many 
sounds of night. And then, when the sun sinks down 
toward the river I will not climb the steps of the hill- 
sides to bid it farewell with my silent gaze. Blond, 
sensuous, well-formed women with alluring eyes will 
go by close to me and my flesh will not be torn with 
desire (already women are past history with me—I am 
through with love!). All my life will drift on in lan- 
guorous indifference, on a dead level, in a fog of gray, 
even, monotonous memories, with no lightning flashes 
of desire, no thunderbolts of action. My fate will be 
everybody’s fate! 

But before I come to that pass I intend to blow a 
mighty blast on the trumpets of the universe. I intend 
to execute all the mandates laid by destiny upon me. 
I intend to settle all my scores, and leave an enduring 
record of my words and of my will. 

But as yet I have hardly begun. A child is born 
when he is nine months old, a man when he is thirty. 
The blossom has come and gone, but the fruit has to 
ripen before it rots on the tree. 


Chapter 50: To the New Generation 


WE begin to learn our true market value somewhere 
around the age of thirty; for then we are brought up 
against men younger than ourselves. 

In our teens and in our twenties we have to deal 
with the older generation, and that is a fairly simple 
proposition. We are judges and hangmen in the name 
of an insurgent youth. It too must have a place in the 
sun, to open its blossoms. Our enemies have already 
arrived: they have won their laurels; and they are 
tired—sheepishly hiding their lazy satiety under a 
bitter silence and smiles of acrid tolerance. They are 
seated on their upholstered thrones and it is too much 
work to get up. They look on, they endure us; and 
if they are really chicken-hearted, they make advances 
to us, and try to hold us off with pretences of welcome. 

But now the others begin to come upon the scene, 
the youngsters, the fledglings, the first of our posterity, 
the boys who were ten and still in school when we were 
twenty and just rolling up our sleeves. And this is our 
first real test on the scales. These boys have waxed 
fat on our ideas. They have dogged our tracks, they 
have followed our trail, for a good part of the way. 
But the time has come for them to change. They are 


now of age. ‘They feel that they must now rebel 
321 


322 THE FAILURE | 


against those just in front of them. They are pre- 
paring to attack us as we attacked our elders. 

Even if they do not attack us in public, they discuss 
us in private. To them we are already history, ripe 
for appraisal. Already they think they are our su- 
periors. ‘They are sure they have passed us, or can 
pass us at the first spurt. Between us there no longer 
prevails the affectionate confidence which bound us to 
men of our own age, the comradeship that gave us cour- 
age in a common competition, and a mutual under- 
standing of our respective shortcomings and weak- 
nesses. These newcomers know it all. They refuse to 
be told. They belong to another era. They have 
ripened in other climes. They have other secret pas- 
sions, other sympathies, other aversions. ‘They step 
forward coldly brandishing the dogmas of their day, 
crystallized in phrases of legal tender. They are as 
cruel as children and as rough as vandals. They be- 
long to another world. They speak a different lan- 
guage. We can be together, work side by side, ex- 
change words and smiles, but we do not understand 
each other. I feel it, I feel it: there is bad blood 
between us and them. I feel hanging over my head 
the sentence of their scorn, their disdainful condemna- 
tion. 

But listen to me: I have no intention of playing the 
dead celebrity as so many of our elders did. I shall 
not pretend to ignore these boys. I shall not hide my 
head under the pile of my books, or contentedly wrap 
myself in the toga of a murdered Cesar. Not in the 


TO THE NEW GENERATION 323 


least! Iam I, and they are they! We shall have this 
scrap out to a finish. I am no more afraid of these 
youngsters than I was of the old fellows. I am ready 
to lay my cards on the table, I am ready to defend 
myself tooth and nail, in words and in ideas. They 
may choose the weapons. I can fight like a savage, or 
according to rules. I give no ground. I do not admit 
that I am beaten. I have already told you: I am 
neither down nor out. The title of this book is wrong 
(a matter of small consequence). It tells of a man 
who sets a high price on his head and who does not 
intend te throw up the sponge for some time to come. 

I do not scorn these children. I do not hate them. 
Some of them I have helped in every possible way. 
- I did not repel them. I treated them roughly when I 
thought them worthy of hearing the truth from a grown 
man. I have watched them, waited for them, been 
glad to see them, sizing them up as they rounded the 
corner of their twenties to see what they were good 
for, what kind of stuff they were made of. I would 
have been better pleased had they been more violent, 
more individual, less well behaved, and less like phono- 
graphs. But no matter! I respect them, I esteem 
them, just as they are. If they do many stupid things 
and write a great deal of nonsense I do not condemn 
them out of hand. You have to do many worthless 
things before you are able to do one thing that is 
passable. No one has a masterpiece ready to pull out 
of his drawer for his twentieth birthday. I hope they 
will produce one later on, do things I have not been 


324 THE FAILURE 


able to do. I shall feel no jealousy if they go be- 
yond me. 

And yet I will not crawl on my stomach before 
them. I will not leave the ring without fighting till 
the last gasp. If there is one among them who thinks 
he can cuff me and walk on me before I am down, he 
will find that he is dealing with a man with two fists, 
not with a dough-gut. To destroy they will have to 
do something themselves. To win they will have to be 
willing to bleed. 

So come on, boys! These thirty years of my life, 
these twenty years of my study, these ten years of my 
writing, I might, perhaps, have put to better use. But 
still I have done something. I have taken part in 
intellectual movements. I have started some of my 
own. I have founded reviews. I have published half 
a dozen books. I have spread my ideas—crazy, stupid, 
profound, as the case may be—to right and to left. I 
am somebody. I stand for something. I have a past— 
and I will have a future at all costs. 

And you? What have you done? What are you 
doing? Let’s have a look! Articles, reviews, criti- 
cisms—criticisms, reviews, articles! H’m’m! Clever, 
chaps—I don’t deny it. Some ability, I grant you! 
But so far—if I’m not mistaken—you have been camp- 
ing on other people’s doorsteps, you are still sponging 
on what others have done. You look like giants be- 
cause you are standing on piles of other people’s books. 
One or two of you have actually produced some art, or 
will be producing some! Congratulations! It’s hard 


TO THE NEW GENERATION 325 


to judge things,—but still harder to do them. We'll 
_ have an eye on you. We'll see! We'll see! 

In the meantime I don’t intend to be brushed aside, 
without a quarrel. I will not be trampled on without 
making a noise. It is for you, for you, more than for 
any one else, that I have written this dramatization of 
_ my mind. 

Here I am: I have laid myself open and bare before 
you; I have exposed my heart and lungs and bowels 
and nerves to your gaze. I have given you an 
- anatomical mannikin to study. If you care to, you 
can know me through and through, become acquainted 
with my most profound, my most real Me. You had 
better do this. It will save you from many hasty 
- judgments. 

These pages are not my biography, but rather an 
accurate account of my innermost life. The explana- 
tion and the key to all the rest of my work are to be 
found here. This is not a work of art—it is a confes- 
sion to myself and to others. Here you will learn to 
know the sentimental and abusive misanthrope for 
whom, God willing, so many people have felt a pro- 
found dislike. I place my soul in your hands. I lay 
the papers of the prosecution and of the defense be- 
fore you. On them and by them I prefer to be judged. 
I will continue to work, to act, with you, at your side. 
But a part of my life has come to a close, and I insist 
that you take account of this rambling explosion in 
fifty chapters. 

With all my sorrows, my hopes, and my weaknesses 


326 THE FAILURE 


I offer myself to your cold critical eye. I ask not your 
pity, not your indulgence, not your praise or consola- 
tion, but just three or four hours of your life. If, 
after you have listened to me, you still believe, in spite 
of what I have said, that I really am through, that I 
really am a failure, you will at least have to’ admit 
that I failed because I started too many things, that 
_ I am nothing because I tried to be everything! 


THE END 


Sy COTES 


i Pin ee 
Ma fitsath ied Bt 


=e 
Woe 





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